State v. Rullman’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 district · 6 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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “the trial court is the sole source of all definitions and statements of law applicable to an issue to be resolved by the jury. Moreover, it is the duty of the circuit judge to see to it that the case goes to the jury in a clear and intelligent manner, so' that they may have a clear and correct understanding of what it is they are to decide, and he or she shall state to them fully the law applicable to the facts. And faced with inaccurate or incomplete instructions, the trial court has a duty to, with the aid of counsel, either correct the defective instructions or to otherwise incorporate it into its oum instructions. In other words, the ultimate responsibility properly to instruct the jury lies with the circuit court and not with trial counsel. [[Image here]] Thus, in order to reconcile the competing interests of the prosecution and defendants, as well as to ensure that juries are appropriately instructed in criminal cases, we hold as follows: The trial judge must bring all included offense instructions that are supported by the evidence to the attention of the parties. The trial judge must then give each such instruction to the jury unless (1) the prosecution does not request that included instructions be given and (2) the defendant specifically objects to the included offense instructions for tactical reasons. If the prosecution does not make a request and the defendant makes a tactical objection, the trial judge must then exercise his or her discretion as to whether the i”

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