Bolin v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The Court: What are you going to ask for? Mr. Registrato: Mental health mitigators. The Court: The statutory mental health mitigators? Mr. Registrato: Yes, ma'am. The Court: Who are you planning to call to establish them? Mr. Registrato: Well, I—I mean, they may not have said the word, but I believe they've already been established. The Court: Which they? Mr. Registrato: Dr. Maher and Dr. Krop. The Court: No, no, which statutory mitigators do you believe have been established? Mr. Registrato: I would ask for the mitigator 7(b), the capital felony was committed while the defendant was under the influence of extreme or mental emotional disturbance, as well as 7(g), the defendant could not have reasonably foreseen his conduct in the course of the commission of the offense would cause— wait a minute. That's not it, Judge. 7(e) the capacity of the defendant to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirement of law was substantially impaired. The Court: Well, as to (b), the only evidence in this case that the crime was committed while the defendant was under the influence of mental or emotional disturbance is the testimony of Dr. Maher who said that at the time of the crime, he was in a mild dissociative— having a mild dissociative episode triggered by the initial approach and rejection by the victim. I don't know how you can get extreme mental or emotional disturbance out of that testimony. You can certainly argue the nonstatutory mental miti”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 841 So. 2d 349 - Johnston v. State

2. “[W]e hold that the preferred approach for Florida trial courts is to conduct individual and sequestered voir dire of prospective jurors whenever, as in Boggs , "the timing and content" of pretrial publicity creates the probability that prospective jurors have been exposed to prejudicial information that will not be admissible at trial. Clearly, the timing of the newspaper articles at issue in this case, which were published two days before and the day of the voir dire examination, was such that the information would be fresh in the minds of venirepersons who had read the articles. Just as clearly, the content of the articles stating that the defendant had been convicted in a prior trial of this same murder, that he had been convicted in another prior trial of murdering two Hillsborough County women, and that he had been sentenced to death was prejudicial and inadmissible information. These articles also contained information about Bolin's former wife's testimony as to Bolin's confession to her, which was the very information this Court had found to be erroneously admitted at Bolin's prior trial. This Court had found harmful error in the admission of this same evidence and had reversed the conviction and remanded for the instant retrial below. Exposure to this information might not require disqualification of prospective jurors if this information were going to be introduced into evidence. However, all of the foregoing information had been excluded from this trial on evidentia”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Kessler v. State

3. “[Bjecause of the timing and content of the newspaper articles and the statements made by these prospective jurors that they had read newspaper articles and had formed opinions about the case, individual voir dire examination of these prospective jurors was compelled. Through individual voir dire, the trial court could have determined the extent of the prospective jurors’ knowledge of the newspaper articles and evaluated whether their preformed opinions could be set aside. This procedure would have also protected the remainder of the venire from any potential contamination resulting from this questioning.... [W]e find that the trial court abused its discretion by not allowing further individual inquiry of the two prospective jurors who could not unequivocally state that they could not set aside their preformed opinion as to Boggs’ guilt and base a verdict solely on the evidence presented”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 143 So. 3d 1080 - Dalia Dippolito v. State