Williams v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “(b) A person commits an offense if he: (1) intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an individual; (d) At the punishment stage of a trial, the defendant may raise the issue as to whether he caused the death under the immediate influence of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause. If the defendant proves the issue in the affirmative by the preponderance of the evidence, the offense is a felony of the second degree.”

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

2. “Hill’s testimony was not offered to show that appellant would in fact hurt [the victim] or take [her daughter] if confronted, but to reveal her state of mind at the time of the offense. Even though Hill’s testimony was admitted before appellant testified, it later served to rebut appellant’s claim that the victim was the aggressor and physically attacked him and that she threatened to take [the daughter] from him.”

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

3. “Such a blanket exclusion of statements made by the deceased spouse encourages automatic exclusion of this evidence without analysis of whether the statements may nevertheless be admissible pursuant to an exception to the hearsay rule.”

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