Castaneda v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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

1. “We have repeatedly recognized that instructing a jury in the basic constitutional principles that govern the administration of criminal justice, is often necessary 4 . Jurors are not experts in legal principles; to function effectively, and justly, they must be accurately instructed in the law. Such instructions are perhaps nowhere more important than in the context of the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, since [t]oo many, even those who should be better advised, view this privilege as a shelter for wrongdoers. They too readily assume that those who invoke it are ... guilty of crime.... And, as the Court has stated, we have not yet attained that certitude about the human mind which would justify us in ... a dogmatic assumption that jurors, if properly admonished, neither could nor would heed the instructions of the trial court.... A trial judge has a powerful tool at his disposal to protect the constitutional privilege — the jury instruction — and he has an affirmative constitutional obligation to use that tool when a defendant seeks its employment. No judge can prevent jurors from speculating about why a defendant stands mute in the face of a criminal accusation, but a judge can, and must, if requested to do so, use the unique power of the jury instruction to reduce that speculation to a minimum 5 . [[Image here]] The freedom of a defendant in a criminal trial to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own wi”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Ulloa v. State · De La Paz v. State

2. “It is interesting to note that in Brown , the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals clearly based its en banc opinion on what the United States Supreme Court said in Carter , holding that "where a request is made to the trial court to add to its charge at the punishment stage of the trial an instruction on the failure of the defendant to testify, or an objection is made to the omission of such charge, it is reversible error if the trial court fads to honor that request or objection” without any mention whatsoever about the harmless error rule. Brown, 617 S.W.2d at 238 . However, without actually overruling Brown , the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in what appears to be an afterthought, applied the harmless error rule for the first time in Beath-ard, ironically basing this action on what the United States Supreme Court refused to say in the same Carter opinion.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Ulloa v. State · De La Paz v. State

3. “We hold that where a request is made to the trial court to add to its charge at the punishment stage of the trial an instruction on the failure of the defendant to testify, or an objection is made to the omission of such charge, it is reversible error if the trial court fails to honor that request or objection because we find that “members of the jury, unless instructed otherwise, may well draw adverse infer-enees from a defendant’s silence,” at the punishment phase of the trial, just as they could from the defendant’s silence at the guilt-innocence stage of the trial. “No judge can prevent jurors from speculating about why a defendant stands mute ..., but a judge can, and must, if requested to do so, use the unique jury instruction to reduce that speculation to a minimum.” See Carter,....”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Ulloa v. State · De La Paz v. State