State v. Boswell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

43 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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““When I charged you this morning, I told you that any verdict that you arrive at, whether it be guilty or not guilty, had to be unanimous, and I told you that almost every jury that sits almost always reaches a unanimous verdict in passing upon and openmind-edly passing upon the evidence, and it has to be obvious to you that unless that happens our jury system would not work, and it does work. Again I told you that no one should surrender a firm conviction contrary to that of the others just to arrive at a unanimous verdict, and I ask no one of you to do anything that you cannot conscientiously do. But let me point out one thing to you. If you report a disagreement, an impasse; if you cannot reach a decision, another jury at a future date will have to sit through another trial of this case. That means that it would be a great expense upon the State of Rhode Island and upon the defendant to go through another trial, and I’m sure that no other jury that will be selected in the future would be better qualified to sit in judgment, to hear and decide this case, no better than you are. * * * I’m going to ask you to go in and fairly reconsider and appraise your individual positions, to have some further discussions among yourselves, to search your conscience and your own souls, regardless of what the verdict may be, and then have a discussion and see if at that point some of you will decide that perhaps you can be unanimous in your deliberations and in your verdict whatever that ver”

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