State v. Frankenberg’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““By not instructing the jury that the only purpose for which evidence of defendant’s prior crimes could be considered was to assess his believability and the weight to be given to his testimony and by stating the testimony could be considered for other purposes, albeit relative to issues not before the jury to decide, the trial court’s instruction was confusing, ambiguous and equivocal. Instruction No. 7 was misleading in that it did not provide meaningful guidance to the jury as to what purpose the evidence of defendant’s commission of prior crimes could or could not be considered.””

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

2. “"If you find and believe from the evidence that defendant (was convicted of) ... the offense of [specify the offense ], you may consider that evidence for the sole purpose of deciding the believability of the defendant and the weight to be given to his testimony and for no other purpose. (You must not consider such previous (conviction) ... as any evidence that the defendant is guilty of any offense for which he is now on trial.)””

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