Howard v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 79 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 83 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Nevertheless, appellant insists the trial court committed error when it furnished the Allen charge while cognizant of the numerical division of the deadlocked jury. See United States v. Sae-Chua, 725 F.2d 530 (9th Cir.1984). In the instant case, in the period of deliberation prior to the Allen charge, the jury foreperson had informed the trial court [without being asked] of the numerical division of the jury. Appellant contends that under federal case law, the possession of such information makes an Allen charge coercive. Appellant’s reliance upon Sae-Chua is misplaced. In Sae-Chua the Ninth Circuit, citing [Brasfield ] found reversible error when the trial court polled a deadlocked jury regarding the likelihood further deliberations would have in achieving a verdict.... Brasfield created a prophylactic rule forbidding the federal trial courts from questioning their juries regarding numerical division. Id. However, such a prophylactic rule is based upon the U.S. Supreme Court’s exercise of supervisory powers and not upon any notion of constitutional infraction. Lowenfield v. Phelps, 484 U.S. at 239-249 n. 3, 108 S.Ct. 546 ,.... The prophylactic rule present in Brasfield and Sae-Chua, supra, simply has no application to this state proceeding or this Court’s holding. We are mindful that in some contexts, a trial court might engender coercion by actively identifying jurors with minority viewpoints and tacitly instructing them to reexamine their perspectives.. However, in the cas”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Rosales v. State · Melancon v. State

2. “arrive at a verdict that is acceptable to all members of the jury if you can do so without doing violence to your conscience.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. West v. State · Rosales v. State

3. “A venireman who requires evidence of a prior murder has not demonstrated an inability to abide by the law if his requirement is predicated upon his personal threshold of reasonable doubt. The State must show more, viz: that the venireman’s insistence on evidence of a prior murder will prevent him from honestly answering the special issue regardless of whether he was otherwise convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of future dangerousness, before it can be said it has met its burden to demonstrate the venireman cannot follow the law.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Johnson v. State · Murphy v. State