Sands v. State’s Empirical Analysis
2001
Citation profile
9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently April 2022
9 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Texas 8th Judicial District Court)
Relationships
Relies on Almanza v. State · Hernandez v. State · Ovalle v. State · Ramirez v. State · Beggs v. State
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Thus, in accordance with the decisions from the Court of Criminal Appeals and the statute being interpreted, an instruction on the mistake-of-fact defense should be given when evidence raising the issue of whether the actor formed a reasonable belief about a matter of fact, if his mistaken belief negated the kind of culpability required for the commission of the offense. Even if this instruction is repetitive to the required proof that the jury find beyond a reasonable doubt that Sands intentionally and knowingly committed this required element of the crime, this statute as interpreted by the Court of Criminal Appeals requires that such an instruction be given to the jury.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Durden v. State“In the present case, the jury came face-to-face with making a decision of whether Sands intentionally and knowingly possessed methamphetamine. This puts squarely in point the question of whether Sands mistakenly believed that the contents of the syringe contained vitamins or he intentionally and knowingly possessed methamphetamine. In this situation, Sands was not denied the right to have the jury consider the defense that he raised concerning a mistake-of-fact defense. Therefore, we find that the failure to submit the requested instruction on mistake of fact was not harmful error.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Durden v. State“It is a defense to prosecution that the actor through mistake formed a reasonable belief about a matter of fact if his mistaken belief negated the kind of culpability required for commission of the offense.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Samford v. State
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.