Sims v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1922
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 53 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions — most recently December 2005 · most notably 3 Va. App. 523 - Bridgeman v. Commonwealth (1986), Jimenez v. Commonwealth (1991)
2 federal appellate · 53 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 Sparf v. United States · McCue v. Commonwealth · Honesty v. Commonwealth · Muscoe v. Commonwealth · Horton 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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Homicide in self-defense may be either justifiable or excusable. If it is either, it entitles the prisoner to an acquittal. But if the difficulty is brought about by the accused and he finds that it is necessary to kill his assailant in order to save his own life, such killing is not in the eye of the law excusable. A man cannot go a-gunning for an adversary and kill him on the first appearance of resistance, and rely upon the necessity of the killing as an excuse therefor.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““Every homicide is presumed to be murder in the second degree and the burden of proving the elements necessary to elevate the crime to murder in the first degree is upon the Commonwealth, but on the other hand, in order to reduce the offense from murder in the second degree to manslaughter or excusable homicide, the burden is upon the prisoner.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.