Riggs v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In Ex parte McGriff, 908 So.2d [1024] at 1033-34, [ (Ala.2004),] the Alabama Supreme Court explained that once a defendant on trial for capital murder has ‘injected the issue of provoked heat of passion,’ the circuit court must instruct the jury that ‘“[t]o convict, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt [that] the defendant was not lawfully provoked to do the act which caused the death of the deceased by a sudden heat of passion.” ’ (quoting Alabama Pattern Jury Instructions — Criminal, pp. 6-8, emphasis omitted). “Further, it is well settled that ‘ “[a] killing in sudden passion excited by sufficient provocation, without malice, is manslaughter.” ’ Roberson v. State, 217 Ala. 696, 699 , 117 So. 412, 415 (1928) (quoting Vaughan v. State, 201 Ala. 472, 474 , 78 So. 378, 380 (1918)). Specifically, § 13A-6-3(a)(2), Ala.Code 1975, provides that a person commits the crime of manslaughter if “‘[h]e causes the death of another person under circumstances that would constitute [intentional murder]; except, that he causes the death due to a sudden heat of passion caused by provocation recognized by law, and before a reasonable time for the passion to cool and for reason to assert itself.’ “Although courts have reached different conclusions as to what constitutes adequate legal provocation, in Rogers v. State, 819 So.2d 643, 662 (Ala.Crim.App. 2001), this Court recognized the following three situations in which murder may be reduced to manslaughter on the basis that there exis”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Woolf v. State