Collins v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

35 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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Having found error and made the determination that it is reversible, we should simply reverse the judgment of conviction and remand for a new trial if the State be so advised, without undertaking to examine appellant’s contention that the evidence is insufficient to convict. What evidence? That error-tainted evidence which the jury heard and obviously considered or that which remains after the contamination is metaphysically eliminated? The former manifestly will not do and the latter becomes an exercise in the abstract — “forming conclusions for ourselves” is the way the court put it more than 120 years ago in Draper v. State [ 22 Tex. 400 (1858) ]. “In pursuing such a fanciful endeavor we do an injustice to the State, for necessarily it must be assumed what could well be absolutely contrary to the case: that the prosecuting attorney mustered, assembled and laid before the jury all evidence known and available to him. We torture the rights of appellant as well, for he is entitled to have his fate decided by a jury upon competent evidence under proper instructions from the trial court. For this Court to award appellant the acquittal he desires on ‘insufficient’ evidence without assurance that the State has exhausted its resources — and this record surely does not provide it — thwarts the quite valid public concern that the guilty be punished. Yet, to affirm his conviction on spoiled evidence serves neither the criminal justice system nor the constant effort to inform its par”

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