Johnson v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 60 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 68 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The person committed the murder for remuneration or the promise of remuneration or employed another to commit the murder for remuneration or the promise of remuneration.”

   22 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Eddings v. State · Henderson v. State

2. “We are now convinced that a plain reading of 21 O.S. 1981 , § 701.13, does not authorize this Court to remand a death case, tried before a jury, solely for a resentencing before a different jury, even when error occurs only in the sentencing stage. Section 701.13(E) provides that with regard to review of death sentences this Court shall be authorized to: 1. Affirm the sentence of death; or 2. Set the sentence aside and remand the case for modification of the sentence to imprisonment for life. Therefore, since this Court is unwilling to speculate as to the effect the improper aggravating circumstance, murder for remuneration, had on the jury's recommendation to impose the death penalty, we find it necessary to modify the sentence to life imprisonment in accordance with Section 701.13(E). When prejudicial error occurs in the sentencing stage of the trial only, this Court has consistently modified the death sentence to life imprisonment and otherwise affirmed. See Odum v. State, 53 O.B.A.J. 2264 , 651 P.2d 703 (Okl.Cr. 1982); Burrows v. State, 640 P.2d 533 (Okl.Cr. 1982); Irvin v. State, 617 P.2d 588 (Okl.Cr. 1980). See also our opinion handed down today in Boutwell v. State, 659 P.2d 322 (Okl.Cr. 1983), in which this Court reached the same result on these grounds.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Eddings v. State · Chaney v. Brown

3. “We are convinced that the withheld evidence, considered as a whole in conjunction with the trial record, ‘might have affected’ the jury’s decision on the death penalty under the Agurs test. 1 ... Therefore, we conclude that there was constitutional error in refusing to disclose the reports after the specific pretrial request for such evidence. Since we have concluded that the previously imposed death sentence cannot constitutionally stand, a new sentence will be imposed and the terms of Chaney’s request will not require a federal eviden-tiary hearing. [Although petitioner’s first degree murder conviction is not invalid, the death penalty imposed following such error must be adjudged constitutionally infirm. Accordingly, the order of the District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma is affirmed with respect to denial of the writ; the order is reversed with respect to its denial of all further relief. The case is remanded to the District Court with directions to enter judgment that the writ of habeas corpus is denied but that, determining the case as law and justice require, the death sentence of petitioner heretofore imposed is adjudged invalid under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and the execution of the petitioner under this invalid death sentence is enjoined; ....”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Chaney v. Brown