Healey 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 determination of mitigating circumstances is within the discretion of the trial court. The trial court is not obligated to accept the defendant’s argument as to what constitutes a mitigating factor, and a trial court is not required to give the same weight to proffered mitigating factors as does a defendant. A trial court does not err in failing to find a mitigating factor where that claim is highly disputable in nature, weight, or significance. An allegation that a trial court abused its discretion by failing to identify or find a mitigating factor requires the defendant on appeal to establish that the mitigating evidence is significant and clearly supported by the record.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Tommy Orlando Townsend, Sr. v. State of Indiana