128 W. Va. 136 - State v. Lawson’s Empirical Analysis
1945
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 50 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 53 later decisions — most recently November 2007 · most notably 161 W. Va. 517 - State v. Starkey (1978), Villaroman v. United States (1950)
3 federal appellate · 50 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. Clifford · Ward v. Brown · Wadley v. Commonwealth · State v. Conkle · Albert v. Commonwealth
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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““This rule [that more than simple negligence is required] would do nothing more than require the State to show that the act, or the manner of the performance of the act, for which conviction is sought is unlawful and culpable and something more than the simple negligence, so common in everyday life, in which there is no claim that anyone has been guilty of wrong-doing.” [ 128 W. Va. at 148 , 36 S.E.2d at 32 ]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“7. The offense of involuntary manslaughter is committed when a person, while engaged in an unlawful act, unintentionally causes the death of another, or where a person engaged in a lawful act, unlawfully causes the death of another.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[A]n instruction should tell the jury that there must be either some unlawful act, or the performance of a lawful act in an unlawful manner, before a defendant can be convicted of involuntary manslaughter.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.