Phyllis Falconer v. Michael P. Lane and Neil F. Hartigan

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• stating that Reddick “obviously considered the errors resulting from the invalid instructions to be of constitutional magnitude”
• holding sequential structure of jury instructions, which encouraged jurors to \answer [murder instruction's] requirements first and then move on [to voluntary manslaughter] only if those requirements [could not] be met\ violated defendant's due process rights
• holding Illinois instructions violated due process
• “if a defendant presents the state courts with a state claim that is functionally identical to a federal claim, then we must regard the federal claim as fairly presented.”
• “No matter how clearly either the State or the defense proved the existence of the mitigating ‘manslaughter defenses,’ the jury could nevertheless return a murder verdict in line with the murder instruction as given”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).