People v. Sanchez’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

34 federal appellate ·

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

1. “[I]t has never been permissible in New York for a jury to convict a defendant of depraved indifference murder “where the evidence produced at trial indicated that if the defendant committed the homicide at all, he committed it with the conscious objective of killing the victim” (in the words of the first [and principal] question). As discussed at some length, however, under Register — and until we started to recast “under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life” post-Sanchez — where both intentional and depraved indifference murder were charged in one-on-one shootings or knifings, these counts were submitted to the jury for it to sort out the defendant’s state of mind unless there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the defendant might have acted unintentionally. That a defendant’s acts virtually guaranteed the victim’s death did not, in and of itself, preclude a guilty verdict on a theory of depraved indifference. To the contrary and as the dissenters in both Register and Sanchez vociferously protested, under the Register formulation the very facts establishing a risk of death approaching certainty and thus presenting compelling circumstantial evidence of intent — for example, a point-blank shooting of the victim in the head — likewise demonstrated depraved indifference. This was the law of the State of New York at the time defendant’s conviction became final.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Policano v. Herbert · Guzman v. Greene

2. “[t]he risks posed by defendant’s conduct in this case and his callous indifference to them entitled the jury to conclude that his conduct placed the crime on the same level as intentional murder. As to the first murder count, defendant sped out of the gas station and entered traffic on a busy New York street at a speed in excess of 40 miles per hour. After striking two cars, he continued accelerating for nearly a block, partly on a sidewalk, until he struck the first victim. These factors, particularly the excessive speed and the failure to brake, satisfy the depraved indifference element. Turning to the second murder count, similar conduct is present, including excessive speed and failure to brake when requested to do so by an occupant of the car, but there is also the additional evidence of depraved indifference to be found in defendant’s comment as he continued down the sidewalk and before the second victim was struck that he could not stop because he had already killed someone.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Echevarria-Perez v. Burge

3. “Sanchez epitomized our depraved indifference jurisprudence under the Register regime, the hallmarks of which — at least with respect to fatal one-on-one shootings or knifings — were twofold. First, even though such an attack by its very nature presents compelling circumstantial evidence of intent to cause death, we considered the question of defendant’s state of mind to be a classic matter for the jury. This strain of thought in our decisional law long predated Register .... Second, the factual setting in which the risk-creating conduct must occur, viewed objectively— Register’s standard for determining whether there are circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life — was fulfilled if a defendant’s actions, created an almost certain risk of death by, for example, shooting the victim in the head multiple times at close range.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Fore v. Ercole