State v. Ealey’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The jury instruction on reckless endangerment, given with the consent of both parties, constituted, in effect, an amendment to the defendant’s indictments. While no one at trial specifically addressed the necessity of amending the indictments to include the offense of reckless endangerment, this oversight was merely the result of the trial court, defense counsel and the State all mistakenly concluding that reckless endangerment is a lesser included offense of attempted first-degree murder. However, indictments ‘may be amended in all cases with the consent of the defendant.’ Tenn. R.Crim. P. 7(b). The defendant here, through his counsel, not only consented to being tried on the charge of reckless endangerment, but actively sought this result. For the purposes of this appeal, we find the defendant’s actions to have constituted consent to an effective amendment to his indictments. He will not now be heard to complain about convictions on an offense which, without his own counsel’s intervention, would not have been charged to the jury. See T.R.A.P. 36(a) (‘Nothing in this rule shall be construed as requiring relief be granted to a party responsible for an error or who failed to take whatever action was reasonably available to prevent or nullify the harmful effect of an error.’)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Demonbreun v. Bell