Brooks v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 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 1 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “On May 17, 1999, Merry Wilson was found dead in her home. Wilson died as a result of multiple stab wounds inflicted by a two-pronged fork which was recovered from her throat. The pathologist testified that Wilson had probably died sometime between the twelfth and the fifteenth of May. Wilson had also recently inherited $10,000 and her bed and mattress had been ransacked. A neighbor, Sandra Graham, stated that she had seen an African American male leaving the victim's home in the early morning of May 13. During a photographic lineup, Graham identified Brooks as the man leaving Wilson's home that morning. Prior to this, Brooks's mother, Towanda Nobles, had told her half-sister, Sherry Maxine Hodges Smith, that Brooks told her that he had stabbed Wilson. After Smith reported this statement to the police, neither Brooks nor Nobles could be located. Brooks had taken a bus to Chicago on May 14th. Brooks was arrested in Chicago in July 2000 and extradited to Mississippi in February 2001. There was a lineup at the jail, where Graham again identified Brooks as the man she had seen leaving Wilson's home the morning of May 13th.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 903 So. 2d 691 - Brooks v. State

2. “I'm going to let it in, yes. I'm going to let them, this fork, and let the jury decide whether this fork represents a—if that's the testimony, then I'm going to let the jury decide whether or not the fork represents a pitchfork.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 903 So. 2d 691 - Brooks v. State

3. “is not excluded under the hearsay rule if each part of the combined statements conforms with an exception to the hearsay rule. . . .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 903 So. 2d 691 - Brooks v. State