Moses v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

20 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “to inform the defendant with some measure of certainty as to the nature of the charges brought against him so that he may have a reasonable opportunity to prepare an effective defense.”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Brown v. State · Kenny Stewart v. State of Mississippi

2. “[t]o attempt to charge multiple separate felonies by using identical language for each crime, including an identical span of time that the crimes were alleged to have occurred, fails woefully to fulfill the fundamental purpose of an indictment.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 930 So. 2d 399 - Baker v. State · 945 So. 2d 422 - Allen v. State

3. “No formal amendment of the indictment was ever undertaken to narrow the dates of the alleged offenses or to attempt to differentiate the facts of the separate alleged incidents by providing even the sketchiest facts of what was alleged to have occurred. [[Image here]] In the case before us, it is patently clear that the State, in drafting the repetitively identical and essentially uninformative counts of this indictment, made no effort to narrow the dates of the separate offenses in any meaningful way. We do not, therefore, face the situation where the State, after its best investigative effort, could only narrow the span of time for an offense to a period in excess of three years. The problems with requiring a defendant to present a defense to such an accusation seem self-evident but we may leave for another day the question of whether the problems are of sufficient gravity to bar the State from proceeding with a prosecution in that circumstance. In this case, there is no question but that the State was aware of information that would have easily permitted it to provide substantially shortened ranges of dates for each offense, together with other relevant facts that would have more specifically identified the alleged incident upon which that count was based. For reasons not apparent in this record, and for which we can find no reasonable excuse, the State declined to do so, proceeding instead to subject Moses to prosecution on multiple criminal counts relying solely on an in”

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