Douglas v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1942
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently January 1983
12 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 Forehand v. State · Frank v. State · Richardson v. State · Madison v. State · Townsend v. State
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"* * * An essential element of murder in the first degree is premeditated design and in order to constitute murder in the first degree it must be established beyond every reasonable doubt, not only that the accused committed an act which resulted in the death of another human being, but it must be proven that before the commission of the act which results in death that the accused had formed in his mind a distinct and definite purpose to take the life of another human being and deliberated or meditated upon such purpose for a sufficient length of time to be conscious of a well defined purpose and intention to kill another human being, and if then in the execution of such purpose and design he kills another, his act is murder in the first degree. It is not necessary that such purpose and intention to kill another human being shall exist for any particular length of time; it is sufficient if between the formation of the purpose or intent to kill and the act of killing there elapses enough time that the slayer is fully conscious of a deliberate purpose and intent to kill another human being * * *." [Emphasis added.]”
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.