Bennett v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “must assess the gravity of the misconduct, the relative strength of the government’s case, the centrality of the issue affected, and any mitigating actions taken by the court, all the while giving due deference to the decision of the trial judge, who had the advantage of being present not only when the alleged misconduct occurred, but throughout the trial.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Coleman v. United States · Clark v. United States

2. “The risk from the admissibility of a prior arrest of the defendant is that the jury may infer from the prior criminal conviction that the defendant is a bad man and that he therefore probably committed the crime for which he is on trial. This risk is greatest when, as here, the crime charged and the prior arrest involve the same offense.. . . The risk of an inference of propensity in these circumstances is unavoidable. Nonetheless, that risk might have been diminished had the court, in response to [the defendant's] mistrial motion, instructed the jury to disregard the question and answer; but no such ameliorative steps were taken.”

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