States v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “While I agree with the majority that the giving of the “flight instruction” was proper, based on the facts and circumstances of this particular case, and the applicable case law, the use of the flight instruction in this state can be described in one word — “dangerous.” In my years of experience as a trial judge, the flight instruction was very seldom requested by the prosecution and almost never given. It simply is not needed. While evidence of flight might be relevant, no legitimate purpose is served by the jury receiving an instruction from the trial court (which heightens the importance of the evidence in the eyes of the jury) highlighting for the jury the fact that the jury can consider evidence of flight as “a circumstance of guilt or guilty knowledge” when “that flight is unexplained and somehow probative of guilt or guilty knowledge.” The term “unexplained flight” is somewhat nebulous, anyway, and a trial court, by giving a flight instruction, simply puts itself in a position of possibly placing reversible error in an otherwise clean record. If a trial court persists in giving a flight instruction, I suggest that it do so with great caution.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Vance Drummer v. State of Mississippi

2. “[W]ith the prosecutors having been duly warned on multiple occasions about the danger of submitting flight instructions, there can be no legitimate hue and cry from the State in the future if this Court ... reverses a criminal conviction based on the trial court’s improper grant of a flight instruction, which had been improvidently submitted by the prosecutor.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Vance Drummer v. State of Mississippi

3. “Likewise, we decline to reverse the trial judge’s decision in this case when we do not know the race and gender of the venire, the race and gender of the final jury, or the race and gender of the other potential jurors struck by the State. The presumption is in favor of the trial court, and the burden is on the appellant to demonstrate reversible error.”

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