142 W. Va. 303 - State v. Morris’s Empirical Analysis
1956
Citation profile
48 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently June 2013 · most notably 161 W. Va. 517 - State v. Starkey (1978), 192 W. Va. 165 - State v. Derr (1994)
48 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 138 W. Va. 613 - Wilson v. Edwards · 133 W. Va. 569 - Davis v. Pugh · 138 W. Va. 166 - Thrasher v. Amere Gas Utilities Co. · State v. Clifford · 134 W. Va. 634 - Thomason v. Mosrie
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.
““If this element be lacking, the killing is not murder, if an offense at all. This term, it has been said, implies a mind under the sway of reason. It excludes the idea of sudden passion aroused by an unanticipated and unprovoked battery inflicted by the assailant without the fault of the person assailed. If in such case the death of the aggressor results, even if intentional, it cannot be traced to a malignant heart but is imputable to human frailty. Passion and malice are not convertible terms, so that an act prompted by the one cannot be said to proceed from the other.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“"10. A sudden intentional killing with a deadly weapon, by one who is not in any way at fault, in immediate resentment of a gross provocation, is prima facie a killing in heat of blood, and, therefore, an offense of no higher degree than voluntary manslaughter." "11. When in such case the evidence discloses that no time intervened between the giving of the provocation and the act of killing, within which passion could have subsided and reason regained its dominion and the fatal act itself was not attended by circumstances of extreme cruelty and inhumanity, nor preceded by conduct from which malice can be inferred, a conviction of murder in the second degree should be set aside and a new trial allowed."”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Kirtley““You, the jury, are instructed that to constitute a wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing, it is not necessary that the intention to kill should exist for any particular length of time prior to the actual killing; it is only necessary that such intention should have come into existence for the first time at the time of the killing or at any moment previously.””
1 later decision 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.