Caraway 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. “On October 7, 2009, Caraway shot Denise Caraway, his wife of almost twenty-six years, seven times resulting in her death in their home in Lawrence County, Indiana. That day, Caraway had been drinking “very heavily,” having consumed “15-18 beers” by about 4:00 pm, then drinking “a few beers and some Ja[e]germeister at another bar, then drinking “a couple of beers when [he] got home.” Appellant’s Appendix at 58. Caraway also “ate 4 Valiums at 4:10 pm” on the day he killed Denise. Id. On October 9, 2009, Caraway was charged with Count I, murder; and Count II, altering the scene of death[,] as a class D felony. On April 6, 2010, Caraway and the State filed a plea agreement in which the State agreed to dismiss Count II in exchange for his guilty plea. After a number of continuances, on February 11, 2011, the trial court took Caraway’s guilty plea, and in doing so instructed him that the sentencing range for murder is forty-five to sixty-five years, with fifty-five years being the advisory sentence and forty-five years being a non-suspendible minimum. On March 8, 2011, the court held a sentencing hearing and identified Caraway’s criminal history consisting mainly of alcohol-related incidents as an aggravating circumstance because it considered his drinking on the night of the incident to have “aggravated the whole evening” and that it “was probably part of the main reason this occurred,” and therefore it directly related to this crime. Transcript at 26. The court also identified Ca”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Larry Michael Caraway v. State of Indiana