104 N.C. App. 431 - State v. Hemphill’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. “evidence that defendant shook the baby as well as the expert testimony that the cause of death was ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome,’ which typically results from an infant’s head being held and shaken so violently that the brain is shaken inside the skull causing bruising and tearing of blood vessels on the surface of and inside the brain, is sufficient to show that defendant acted with ‘recklessness of consequences,. . . though there may be no intention to injure a particular person.’”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 130 N.C. App. 1 - State v. Qualls · 146 N.C. App. 1 - State v. Smith

2. “[Malice] comprehends not only particular animosity ‘but also wickedness of disposition, hardness of heart, cruelty, recklessness of consequences, and a mind regardless of social duty and deliberately bent on mischief, though there may be no intention to injure a particular person. . . .’ ‘[It] does not necessarily mean an actual intent to take human life; it may be inferential or implied, instead of positive, as when an act which imports danger to another is done so recklessly or wantonly as to manifest depravity of mind and disregard of human life.’ In such a situation ‘the law regards the circumstances of the act as so harmful that the law punishes the act as though malice did in fact exist.’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 130 N.C. App. 1 - State v. Qualls