State v. Boyd’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 9 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. “Defendant was convicted of the felony-murder of William Price and of the armed robberies of Price and his companion, David Hippen, in Memphis during the early morning hours of 8 November 1986. On the night of November 7-8, Price and Hippen, who had come to the Memphis area from Kansas City to visit Price’s father, drove in Price’s Ford van to downtown Memphis to find a motel room. As they proceeded on this mission they decided to solicit some female companionship. They were directed by an individual they met along the way to Raiford’s Lounge on Mulberry and Vance Streets, where two women, Barbara Lee and Renita Tate, agreed to accompany them and got into the van. Lee had been at the disco with her boyfriend, the defendant Boyd, and with two other men, Bruce Wright and Terry Yarber. Price, Hippen and the two women drove to the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel, where Price started to give one of the women a $100 bill to rent two rooms. Because the men would not let both women leave the van at the same time, the two women began to argue about which of them would go to the office to pay for the rooms. At this time apparently all the doors of the van were open. Price was sitting in the driver’s seat, Hippen in the passenger seat. Lee was standing outside the van on the passenger’s side and Tate was standing outside on the driver’s side. The lights were on in the parking lot, and the van’s dome and side door lights were also on. While the women were arguing, Wright, Yarber and the”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Abdus-Samad v. Bell

2. “the prosecution stressed the defendant’s prior conviction throughout its argument as demonstrated by the following passage: The law also says if you kill once and then you kill again, it’s okay for you to suffer the consequences of the death penalty. What does it take, ladies and gentlemen? How many people have to die before we put a stop to [the defendant]. Do we have to wait until he kills and kills and kills again? He’s killed twice. You would think ... after killing once that a man like that, if he’s got any conscience at all, would want to get as far away from a pistol, an instrument of death, as he could ever get ... It’s good for nothing other than to kill other human beings. Twice [the defendant] used the same instrument of death. It’s time ... to put a stop to it.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Abdus-Samad v. Bell

3. “[I]t is important, when conducting harmless error review, to completely examine the record for the presence of factors which potentially influence the sentence ultimately imposed. These include, but are not limited to, the number and strength of remaining valid aggravating circumstances, the prosecutor's argument at sentencing, the evidence admitted to establish the invalid aggravator, and the nature, quality and strength of mitigating evidence.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. King v. State