Davis v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1898
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently January 1980
24 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 Miller v. State · Shields v. State · McDermott v. State · Commonwealth v. Brown · Vancleave 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““If that is the law, then in every conceivable case of a violent attack upon one by another, no matter what the circumstances may be, no matter what the disparity between the ages and physical strength of the two may be, the assaulted party must stand and take his chances of being knocked down and stamped into a jelly, or of being choked to death before he can lawfully use a weapon in his defense. Though the appearance and circumstances of the assault were such as to induce the reasonable belief to be honestly entertained by the defendant that his life was in danger, or that he was in danger of great bodily harm from the assault, he could not lawfully use a deadly weapon to repel such assault, unless the assailant had a weapon in his hands, or the appearance thereof, no matter how many he had about his person. This is not the law.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Hill v. State
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.