State v. . Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1896
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently May 2000
16 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on State v. Robinson · State v. Johnson · State v. Fuller · State v. . Norwood · State v. Covington
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“. . . In State v. Norwood, 115 N.C. [789], 790, 20 S.E. 712 . . . it was settled that if the prisoner once formed `the fixed design to take life' it was immaterial how soon after deliberately determining to do so the purpose was carried into execution. . . . * * * * * * ". . . But this Court has never as yet ventured to give a more specific definition of the mental process which the Legislature intended to describe by the use of these words [premeditation and deliberation] than the general one given in Fuller's case. It is inaccurate to say that, whenever there is an intent to kill, the homicide belongs to the class of murders in the first degree ; . . . * * * * * * ". . . The word which marks distinctly the two degrees is `premeditated'. . . . ` To say that murder was of the first degree, simply because it was intended at the moment . . . would be to construe the words "deliberate and premeditated”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Buchanan“. . . In order to constitute deliberation and premeditation, something more must appear than the prior existence of actual malice or the presumption of malice which arises from the use of a deadly weapon. Though the mental process may require but a moment of thought, it must be shown, so as to satisfy the jury beyond a reasonable doubt, that the prisoner weighed and balanced the subject of killing in his mind long enough to consider the reason or motive which impelled him to the act, and to form a fixed design to kill in furtherance of such purpose or motive. [Citations omitted.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Buchanan“"The innate sense of justice implanted in the breast of every good man demanded that a distinction should be drawn between cases where there was actual though not legal provocation and those where a fixed purpose was shown . . . * * * * * * "If . . . there was a quarrel or argument, and in the heat of sudden passion, engendered by disagreeable language, which would not have been provocation sufficient to bring the offense within the definition of manslaughter, the crime . . . was murder in the second degree."”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Baggett
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.