Ray v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The locus of his incarceration is not a critical inquiry in establishing the crime of escape. As was said in Chisom [Chisom v. State, 539 S.W.2d 831 (Tenn.Cr.App.)] the offense is the escape from custody of the confining authority, so that the place of confinement is not, in fact, a relevant inquiry. Both Johnson v. State, 148 Tenn. 196 , 253 S.W. 963 (1923), and State v. Brooks, 224 Tenn. 712 , 462 S.W.2d 491 (1970), recognize that for such a variance between the indictment and the proof to be fatal to a conviction the variance must pertain to a material aspect of the offense. If surplusage is with respect to a matter legally essential to the charge in the indictment, then it must be proven in the degree of detail alleged. Johnson, supra. The indictment here charged Ray with escaping ‘while confined as an inmate in the Brushy Mountain Penitentiary in Morgan County, Tennessee, under the custody and supervision of the Department of Corrections of the State of Tennessee, . . . .’ (emphasis added). The trial court’s minutes show that Ray was committed to the warden of the state penitentiary, and the state penitentiary must be viewed as a system of prisons, rather than one place of incarceration.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Burns v. State