Murphy v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[[Image here]] 10. Satterwhite [defendant’s trial attorney] sought a commitment from Judge Hearn of a “cap” of twenty years if the defendant entered a plea of guilty. 11. Judge Hearn refused to commit himself to any punishment stating it was against his policy. [[Image here]] 17. On the day of trial, the prosecutor told the judge in annex court that he intended to try all three counts of the aggravated robbery indictment. Mr. Satterwhite erroneously believed that he had already obtained a severance of counts on that indictment. Mr. Satterwhite was not prepared to try the secoiid and third counts of the indictment, and he so advised the court, the prosecutor and the defendant. [[Image here]] 23. The primary reason that the defendant changed his plea from not guilty to no contest on the day of trial was because Mr. Satterwhite told him that the motion for severance had been denied, that he would have to try all three cases together (two of which he was unprepared to try), that a jury hearing evidence of three aggravated robberies would be likely to assess a term of life imprisonment, and that Judge Hearn had agreed to assess punishment at no more than twenty-five years. [[Image here]] 33. The court sentenced the defendant to forty years in prison on the aggravated robberies and twenty years on the robberies. This was five to twenty years more than Mr. Satterwhite had told the defendant he would receive, based on the trial court’s alleged representations to him. [[Image here]]”

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