Holt v. Wyrick’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

23 federal appellate · 2 district · 9 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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “This court’s decision in Henson v. Wyrick, supra, likewise does not require reversal. In that case, the sheriff, whose subordinates investigated the crime and made the arrest, hand-picked the additional jurors from among his acquaintances. We granted habeas corpus relief because there existed the danger of a “conviction-prone” jury because of the “great potential for the sheriff to handpick jurors sympathetic to the prosecution.” In this case, however, the facts differ significantly from those in Henson. First, the sheriffs office in neighboring Pemiscot County, rather than the New Madrid County sheriffs office, conducted the investigation. * * * Equally important, Holt presented no evidence that the sheriff selected only his acquaintances for the jury. Although we express concern with the fundamental fairness in this method of selecting bystander jurors, the record in this case discloses no basis for inferring a deprivation of due process. Accordingly, we reject Holt’s contention.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Thompson v. White