Ewers 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. “Implicit in the supreme court’s disposition in White is its recognition that the accused may suffer substantial prejudice from an appellate court’s refusal to review potentially meritorious claims implicating the fairness of a conviction or sentence. But absent exceptional circumstances, claims such as the ones Ewers asserts here — search and seizure arguments and purported Miranda violations — implicate neither the fairness of a conviction nor the fairness of a sentence. An appellate court’s refusal to decide the merits of such claims based on a procedural default ordinarily poses no danger of substantial prejudice to the accused. Cf. Moreau v. State, 588 P.2d 275, 279-80 (Alaska 1978) [ (holding that search and seizure claims ordinarily can not be raised for the first time on appeal because such errors do not affect the fundamental fairness of the fact-finding process)]. Thus, in an appeal reinstated, pursuant to White, solely on the basis of potentially meritorious issues and an apparent absence of prejudice to the state, review on the merits should ordinarily be denied as to claims involving the exclusionary rule that have no bearing on the fairness of the conviction or sentence.”

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