Hubbard v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 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. “" ‘Therefore the utmost caution was required in capital trials, in favor of life, and if an irregularity materially affecting the trial occurred, to the injury of the accused, the court usually represented such matter to the crown, and a pardon was granted’ (citing Commonwealth v. Green, 17 Mass. 417 ). “The authority of the district courts to grant new trials in criminal cases, and especially after the term at which a conviction is had, must, we think, if existent, be found in the statute; and, if not there, the remedy is by an ¿ppeal to the executive who is clothed-with the pardoning power. As reason for differentiating regarding relief against judgments in civil and in criminal cases, it may be observed that the judgment in the civil case, when rendered, becomes fixed and a finality, except as the courts possess jurisdiction at law or in equity to grant relief against it in a proper case, while the judgment in a criminal case, in so far as its effectiveness is concerned, is always open to modification or annulment by an appropriate appeal to the pardoning power, against the exercise of which time does not run.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Nichols v. Houghton Circuit Judge