State v. McPherson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 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. “After Penry, failure of a trial court to inform the jury that it could consider and give effect to mitigating circumstances violates rights of defendant under the Eighth Amendment and renders our capital punishment scheme mandated by former Article 37.071 unconstitutional.... The judge of the court below manifested his understanding and appreciation of the situation when he caused the court to give the instruction and to submit the fourth special issue to the jury. And ... the trial judge also understood and appreciated the dilemma thus created by affirmative answers to statutory issues and the negative answer to the constitutional issue: on one horn, the statutory mandate that the trial court sentence appellant to death because the jury returned an affirmative finding on each of the only three legislatively prescribed special issues; on the other horn, the absence of an explicit statutory mandate to implement the implicit constitutional dictate that bars the State of Texas from executing appellant because the jury returned a negative finding on special issue four, i.e., that the death penalty is not a reasoned moral response to mitigating evidence favoring appellant.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Ex Parte Staley

2. “[ojther than the provisions in Article 37.071, V.A.C.C.P., Texas jurisprudence has no authority allowing the submission of special issues to a jury in a criminal case”). Thus, any judicial efforts to comply with the Supreme Court mandate in Penry I also had to comply with the legislatively mandated procedure set out in article 37.071. Both the convoluted instructions rejected in Penry II and the present trial court’s submission of the extra-statutory Question, coupled with an instruction to change a”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Ex Parte Staley

3. “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

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