Bryant v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The State offered the following facts in support of its claim that it had exercised due diligence in attempting to secure the attendance of Ricky Vickers to testify at Bryant’s new sentencing hearing: Upon contacting the Department of Corrections (‘DOC’) to secure Vickers’s attendance, the prosecution was informed that Vickers had completed his sentence and that he was no longer in the custody of DOC. The prosecution also contacted the Board of Pardons and Paroles to see if it had an address for Vickers, but was told that Vickers had completed his sentence and was no longer required to report to it. An investigator was sent out to question Vickers’s family members about his location. When questioned about Vickers’s whereabouts, various members of Vickers’s family advised the investigator that they did not know where he was. Some speculated that Vickers might be at his girlfriend’s house, but were either unwilling or unable to supply the State with a name or address for the girlfriend. When Vickers’s grandmother told investigators that he might ‘come by,’ the State issued a subpoena for Vickers ‘in care of his grandmother’s house,’ and had a Houston County sheriffs deputy spend three days attempting to locate and serve Vickers with the subpoena. “Given these circumstances, we conclude that the State proved that it used due diligence in an attempt to secure the attendance of Ricky Vickers. The State did ‘more than simply issue a subpoena and stop when it [was] returned “not fo”

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

2. “[i]ndeed the only case we know of successfully challenging execution by lethal injection involved an inmate's individualized claim that death by lethal injection would violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment because he suffered from collapsed veins. See Nelson v. Campbell , 541 U.S. 637 , 124 S.Ct. 2117 , 158 L.Ed.2d 924 (2004).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 991 So. 2d 313 - McNabb v. State

3. “lethal injection is not per se cruel and unusual punishment.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 991 So. 2d 313 - McNabb v. State