Brown v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

60 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 62 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “We have repeatedly recognized that “instructing a jury in the basic constitutional principles that govern the administration of criminal justice,” [cite omitted] is often necessary.19 Jurors are not experts in legal principles; to function effectively, and justly, they must be accurately instructed in the law. Such instructions are perhaps nowhere more important than in the context of the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory selfincrimination, since “[t]oo many, even those who should be better advised, view this privilege as a shelter for wrongdoers. They too readily assume that those who invoke it are ... guilty of crime_” [Cite omitted.] And, as the Court has stated, “we have not yet attained that certitude about the human mind which would justify us in ... a dogmatic assumption that jurors, if properly admonished, neither could nor would heed the instructions of the trial court_” [Cite and footnote omitted.] A trial judge has a powerful tool at his disposal to protect the constitutional privilege — the jury instruction — and he has an affirmative constitutional obligation to use that tool when a defendant seeks its employment. No judge can prevent jurors from speculating about why a defendant stands mute in the face of a criminal accusation, but a judge can, and must, if requested to do so, use the unique power of the jury instructions to reduce that speculation to a minimum.21 [[Image here]] The freedom of a defendant in a criminal trial to remain silent “unless h”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Spencer v. State · Castaneda v. State

2. “[I]f a defendant does not testify at the guilt stage of the trial, but does testify at the punishment stage of the trial, and admits his guilt to the crime for which he has been found guilty, he has, for legal purposes, entered the equivalent of a plea of guilty. The law as it presently exists is clear that such a defendant not only waives a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, but he also waives any error that might have occurred during the guilt stage of the trial.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Gordon v. State · Thomas v. State

3. “The mere finding of guilt does not terminate the privilege against self-incrimination ... [T]he privilege ceases only when liability to punishment no longer exists...”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Montoya v. State · Jones v. State