Commonwealth v. Moore’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

46 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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In order that one may be guilty of homicide, the act must be done by him actually or constructively, and that cannot be, unless the crime be committed by his own hand, or by the hands of someone acting in concert with him, or in furtherance of a common object or purpose. The defendants can in no sense be said to have aided or abetted John Young, for he was firing at them; and to hold them responsible criminally for the accidental death of a bystander, growing out of his bad aim, would be carrying the rule of criminal responsibility for the acts of others beyond all reason. Suppose, instead of killing an innocent bystander, Young had killed Moore, one of the robbers, would the survivor have been guilty of murder? And yet, if the principle sought to be maintained by the commonwealth be sound, the survivor would necessarily be guilty of murder, because the owner of the house to be robbed had killed his companion, for he could just as truly be said to have aided and abetted the owner of the house in that case as in this. Indeed, the matter could be carried still further. The dead robber would also be guilty of murder, because his part in the causation of the homicide of which he was the victim would have been precisely the same as that which resulted in the death of Anderson Young. In other words, the acts of the defendants provoked and justified the shooting on the part of John Young, and if they are criminally responsible for the accidental death of a bystander shot by Young, ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Almeida