State v. Bertrand’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

121 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 121 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Due to this Court’s prior determinations that Article 782 withstands constitutional scrutiny, and because we are not presumptuous enough to suppose, upon mere speculation, that the United States Supreme Court’s still valid determination that non-unanimous 12 person jury verdicts are constitutional may someday be overturned, we find that the trial court erred in ruling that Article 782 violated the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. With respect to that ruling, it should go without saying that a trial judge is not at liberty to ignore the controlling jurisprudence of superior courts.”

   23 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. State v. Flores · 48 So. 3d 1144 - State v. Boudreaux

2. “[c]ases in which punishment is necessarily confinement at hard labor shall be tried by a jury composed of twelve jurors, ten of whom must concur to render a verdict.”

   19 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 162 So. 3d 1284 - State v. Mack · 120 So. 3d 933 - State v. Santos-Castro

3. “defendants argue that the use of non-unanimous verdicts [has] an insidious racial component, allow[s] minority viewpoints to be ignored, and is likely to chill participation by the precise groups whose exclusion the Constitution has proscribed.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Brooks · State v. Young