Hobbs v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 14 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[R]eversal for a trial error which incorrectly admitted incompetent evidence does not constitute a decision that the government has failed to prove its case. Rather, it is a determination that although the government did prove its case, it did so by evidence which was incompetent, and defendant is entitled to a new trial free of this procedural defect.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Couch v. Maricle · Merriweather v. Commonwealth

2. “When a conviction is reversed on appeal because the evidence at trial was not sufficient to sustain a verdict of guilt, the United States Supreme Court has held that the case cannot be remanded for retrial but must be dismissed. Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1 , 98 S.Ct. 2141 , 57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978). Kentucky has followed this holding in Crawley v. Commonwealth, Ky., 568 S.W.2d 927 (1978). Hobbs contends that charges against him must be dismissed rather than remanded because there would have been no sufficient evidence to sustain his conviction if the trial judge had sustained his objection and refused to admit the incompetent evidence to establish the dates of the commission of the offenses, citing Burks and Crawley . Burks and Crawley were each decided upon the basis that the evidence admitted at the trial, without regard to whether it was erroneously admitted, was not sufficient to sustain a conviction. Here, the testimony admitted in evidence was sufficient to sustain the conviction. We are not disposed to hold that an error by a trial court in the admission of testimony in evidence precludes a retrial when an appellate reversal is procured by a defendant on that ground. In such a case, the defendant is entitled only to an opportunity to obtain a fair readjudication of his guilt free from error. Burks v. United States, supra , relied upon by Hobbs, makes this very point in the following language: As we have seen in Part II, supra, the cases which have arisen since [ U.S.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Davis v. Commonwealth