Plata v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions — most recently September 2017 · most notably Malik v. State (1997), Vasquez v. State (2012)
3 federal appellate · 44 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Almanza v. State · Dinkins v. State · Garrett v. State · Hughes v. State · Pitts v. State
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Now, if you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Gabriel Gonzales, Shawntee Simmons, Markett Warfield, Sherrard Williams, and DeAnthony Walker entered into an agreement to commit the offense of robbery or felony theft, as above defined, of or from Louella Hilton, pursuant to that agreement, they did carry out their conspiracy and that on or about the 20th day of July A.D., 1994, in Bexar County, Texas, while in the course of committing such robbery or felony theft, Gabriel Gonzales intentionally caused the death of Louella Hilton, to-wit: by shooting Louella Hilton with a deadly weapon, namely: a handgun, with the specific intent to kill Louella Hilton, and that the shooting of Louella Hilton was committed in furtherance of the conspiracy, if any, among Gabriel Gonzales, Shawntee Simmons, Markett Warfield, Sherrard Williams, and DeAnthony Walker to rob or to commit felony theft from Louella Hilton, and that the shooting of Louella Hilton by Gabriel Gonzales, if there was such, was done in furtherance of the conspiracy to rob or commit felony theft from Louella Hilton, if any, and was an offense that should have been anticipated by defendant, Markett Warfield, as a result of the carrying out of a conspiracy, then you will find the defendant, Markett Warfield, guilty of capital murder.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. MacIas v. State · Warfield v. State“if it either contains an application paragraph specifying all of the conditions to be met before a conviction under such theory is authorized, or contains an application paragraph authorizing a conviction under conditions specified by other paragraphs of the jury charge to which the application paragraph necessarily and unambiguously refers, or contains some logically consistent combination of such paragraphs.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“[Superfluous abstractions, those not necessary to an understanding of concepts or terms contained in the application paragraph, are generally innocuous. Reversible error only occurs in the giving of an abstract instruction when the instruction is an incorrect or misleading statement of a law which the jury must understand in order to implement the commands of the application paragraph.... The inclusion of a merely superfluous abstraction, therefore, never produces reversible error in the court’s charge because it has no effect on the jury’s ability fairly and accurately to implement the commands of the application paragraph or paragraphs.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Ramirez v. State
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.