Caldwell v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “If the error in the charge was the subject of a timely objection in the trial court, then reversal is required if the error is “calculated to injure the rights of defendant,” which means no more than that there must be some harm to the accused from the error. In other words, an error which has been properly preserved by objection will call for reversal as long as the error is not harmless. On the other hand, if no proper objection was made at trial and the accused must claim that the error was “fundamental,” he will obtain a reversal only if the error is so egregious and created such harm that he “has not had a fair and impartial trial” — in short “egregious harm.””

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

2. “if it either contains an application paragraph specifying all of the conditions to be met before a conviction under such theory is authorized, or contains an application paragraph authorizing a conviction under conditions specified by other paragraphs of the jury charge to which the application paragraph necessarily and unambiguously refers, or contains some logically consistent combination of such paragraphs.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Rene Daniel Villarreal v. State