Parvin 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. “On the morning of October 15, 2007, Dr. David Parvin called 911 to report that he accidentally had shot Joyce Parvin, his wife of forty-nine years, at their home near Aberdeen, Mississippi. When law enforcement officials arrived, Joyce was dead. She was found in a desk chair, her body draped over the left ax-mrest, with a shotgun wound on the right side of her torso. Parvin reported to the investigating officers that he had been rushing out of the house to shoot a beaver and was carrying a loaded shotgun. According to Par-vin, in his haste, he tripped, and during his fall, the gun discharged, shooting his wife, who was seated at their home computer. He told the officers that he believed the gun had been parallel to the floor or slightly elevated. He also was unsure about some of the other details: whether he or his wife had spotted the beavers first; whether he had tripped over the rug or the dog; whether his knee had hit the floor; and whether the barrel of the gun had hit the armrest of the chair where Joyce was sitting at the moment it discharged. Parvin also said that he typically held the gun, a double-barreled Savage Arms Fox 12-gauge shotgun, with his left hand on the fore grip and his right hand around the trigger guard, but was unsure whether he had pulled one of the two triggers accidentally. Although Parvin was unsure about many of the details surrounding the incident, he maintained at trial that the shooting was an accident caused by his unexpectedly tripping and ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. David W. Parvin v. State of Mississippi

2. “We find that Parvin cannot successfully invoke the Weathersby rule, given the testimony by his mistress. As recounted above, she testified that Parvin initially told her that Joyce had committed suicide. Sometime later, he admitted that he had lied about the manner of his wife’s death and told his paramour that the shooting had been an accident. Because Parvin’s claim that his wife had taken her own life contradicted his assertion that he had shot her accidentally, we find that Parvin is not entitled to a judgment of acquittal under Weathersby . [[Image here]] ... Additionally, we find that the defendant is not entitled to an acquittal based on the Weathersby rule due to his highly inconsistent statements following his wife’s death.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. David W. Parvin v. State of Mississippi

3. “Betty Hamblin testified that Parvin initially had told her Joyce had committed suicide, but then he “changed his story” to the version he had given in his initial interview with police. According to Hamblin, she and Parvin had been engaged in an extramarital affair prior to and after the death of his wife, and she said that, after his wife’s death, Parvin had asked her to marry him. She said that she later learned that Parvin had been seeing still another woman, whom he eventually married instead.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. David W. Parvin v. State of Mississippi