State v. Greer’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 15 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Greer was able to present some regarding the circumstances surrounding his pretrial statements and his state of mind at the time. He testified, for instance, that at the time of his arrest “the police had their guns drawn,” that he saw them “grab [his girlfriend] from her truck,” and that an officer “put his feet in [his] back” and handcuffed him while he was lying on the ground. He also described to the jury the condition of his Detroit jail cell and his inability to fall asleep the night before his interviews with two Minneapolis police officers. In addition, he testified on the issue of his state of mind during the interviews and explained his motivation for making the statements. He told the jury that he placed himself at the scene of the crime during the second interview in Detroit “[t]o kind of make [himself] into an eyewitness so [he] could get out of jail....” At the same time, Greer was not permitted to testify that shortly after his arrest he heard a police report indicating that there were shots fired at the building where his friends lived. The trial court also excluded Greer’s testimony on the subject of his past experiences with the Detroit police, which included a friend being shot at by a police officer.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Greer v. Minnesota

2. “serious concern * * * that when counsel did, in the context of a motion for a Schwartz hearing, raise the jury contact issue, the motion was decided by the same trial court judge alleged to have engaged in improper conduct. When a judge presides over a motion hearing to decide whether further inquiry is required into the propriety of the judge’s own conduct, it raises questions about the impartiality of the court’s decision. Because public trust and confidence in the judiciary depend on the integrity of the judicial decision-making process, we can ill afford to ignore this problem. We stress that nothing in the albeit sparse record indicates that the trial court’s consideration of Greer’s motion was not impartial. However, the mere appearance of partiality warrants concern. In light of this concern and the inadequacy of the record before us, we remand to the chief judge of the Fourth Judicial District for consideration of Greer’s motion seeking a Schwartz hearing on the issue of the trial court’s ex parte contacts with the jury.”

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

3. “[Appellant’s] ability to conduct an adequate voir dire of these prospective jurors was not infringed and * * ⅜ the trial court did not frustrate the purposes of voir dire by preventing [appellant] from discovering bases for challenge or inhibiting him from making an informed exercise of peremptory challenges.”

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