State v. Kinder’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 1 district · 106 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 113 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “factual grounds to find an appearance of impropriety and doubt the impartiality of the court,”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Smulls v. State · State v. Dodd

2. “Basile first argues that a series of statements made by the prosecuting attorney was improper. While no objection was made to some of the statements, he argues that the statements warranted sua sponte relief by the trial court under the plain error doctrine or, in the alternative, that counsel was ineffective in failing to object. Prosecuting attorney Braun stated the following during closing argument of the guilt phase: Mr. Basile is in the basement, most likely in this room, locked in. About 11:40, you heard from Melanie, Jenny McKay comes by and drops off Courtney [one of the DeCaro children]. Courtney gets in the car with the dog and Mr. DeCaro drives off to pick Ricky up from school. In the meantime, the other two children come home and are in the house. In the house with their mother's killer. ... It was either her or me and I wasn't going back to prison. How does that relate? Well, DeCaro had him on the hook after he did the first one. He knew if DeCaro got divorced there was a chance, and I'm willing to bet that DeCaro told him, my wife's going to tell on us. You got to go through with this because you're going to go down if I get divorced. My wife knows about this and I told her you were in on it and you are going to go down if I get divorced. My wife knows about this and I told her you were in on it, and you are going to go down. And that's why the sentence makes sense.... He killed the mother of four children after he had been in the house with those children.... W”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 125 F. Supp. 2d 930 - Basile v. Bowersox

3. “Basile claims that improper evidence of other crimes, bad acts and bad character were admitted. Again, most of the claims are reviewable only as plain error or in conjunction with claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. A. Without objection, Susan Jenkins testified that she accompanied Basile when he was looking for a place to strip the van. One of several stops they made was at Bill Borak's house. There, Basile "smoked a joint" with four others. [Tr. 1809.] Basile now alleges ineffective assistance of counsel for failure to object to the admission of evidence. At the post-conviction motion hearing, defense counsel testified she did not want smoking marijuana to be perceived as "some big, bad act." The motion court found that counsel did not object as a matter of trial strategy. The motion court did not clearly err in finding counsel's conduct to be sound strategy. Defense lawyers are given a broad range of leeway in determining what strategy to follow, and that leeway extends to decisions as to when to make objections. In addition, the isolated mention of using marijuana did not amount to plain error.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 125 F. Supp. 2d 930 - Basile v. Bowersox