Sneed v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 83 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 96 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “1) a misstatement of the law; 2) asserted as a fact; 3) by one professing to know the law; 4) which is relied upon by other jurors; 5) who for that reason changed their vote to a harsher punishment.”

   26 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Salazar v. Dretke · Joel Rene Valdez v. State

2. “(8) Where, from the misconduct of the jury, the court [that is, the trial court] is of the opinion that the defendant has not received a fair and impartial trial....”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Austin v. State · Benitez v. State

3. ““... Three jurors testified at the hearing on the motion for new trial. The jury foreman, Noel Pittman, in his testimony estimated that during the jury deliberation on punishment the length of time appellant would have to serve in the Texas Department of Corrections on any sentence assessed was mentioned on two or three occasions. He testified that on each occasion he said to the jury that ‘the court had specifically proscribed such discussions and that we would not discuss that.’ A second juror, Allen Cros-land, testified that he recalled a couple of times during deliberation on punishment it was mentioned that the defendant would serve approximately one-third of the time assessed. Juror Crosland testified further that the jury foreman reminded the jury that they were not to talk about the length of time the defendant would serve for any sentence given but were to concern themselves with the specific number of years they were to assess as punishment. He testified that no juror mentioned any particular case with which he or she was familiar. He remembered the foreman’s admonishing the jury a ‘couple of times’ that they were not to consider the length of time a defendant would serve on any given sentence. He further testified that statements were made two or three times during the deliberations on punishment with regard to the length of time a defendant would have to serve on a given sentence. “The third juror to testify was Sharon L. Tharp. She testified that statements were ”

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