Thomas v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 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. “When the prosecution uses defendant’s post-arrest silence to impeach an exculpatory story offered by defendant at trial and the prosecution directly links the implausibility of the exculpatory story to the defendant’s ostensibly inconsistent act of remaining silent, reversible error results even if the story is transparently frivolous. When the prosecutor does not directly tie the fact of defendant’s silence to his exculpatory story, i.e., when the prosecutor elicits that fact on direct examination and refrains from commenting on it or adverting to it again, and the jury is never told that such silence can be used for impeach ment purposes, reversible error results if the exculpatory story is not totally implausible or the indicia of guilt not overwhelming. When there is but a single reference at trial to the fact of defendant’s silence, the reference is neither repeated nor linked with defendant’s exculpatory story, and the exculpatory story is transparently frivolous and evidence of guilt is otherwise overwhelming, the reference to defendant’s silence constitutes harmless error.”

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

2. “Assuming without deciding that the note at issue constituted an informal verdict, it does not manifestly appear that the jury intended to acquit [the defendant].”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Traylor, Peter Anthony