Carson v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The obvious objective of the expunction statute is to remove from public access and from access by the officials and agencies named in the order all evidence of a petitioner's arrest and the charges made against him. This evidence consists generally of the indictment and the photographs, fingerprints, and other matters comprising the arrest record and records relating to the expunction proceeding. To the extent [the city] possess records other than these types of records, they are not subject to expunction.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ex Parte S.C. · Texas Education Agency v. T.F.G.

2. “If you've been arrested and you've got an arrest record, and no circumstances exist, there is no reason at all in a just society why you should be penalized for the rest of your life for the existence of that record. It's almost unthinkable to me that in Texas in 1977 that we still have thousands of people who've been arrested by a mistake, by accident, in cases in which there were no charges to be filed ultimately but their records reflect for the rest of their lives a charge which was filed against them and they go through life with a felony.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ex Parte S.C. · Ex Parte SC

3. “[a]n arrest is a threshold requirement under the expunction statute.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ex Parte SC