Wallace v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

44 federal appellate · 1 district · 50 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 127 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The evidence might appear to the court to be simply overwhelming to show that the killing was in fact murder, and not manslaughter or an act performed in self defense, and yet, so long as there was some evidence relevant to the issue of manslaughter, the credibility and force of such evidence must be for the jury, and cannot be matter of law for the decision of the court. ... A judge may be entirely satisfied from the whole evidence in the case that the person doing the killing was actuated by malice; that he was not in any such passion as to lower the grade of the crime from murder to manslaughter by reason of any absence of malice; and yet if there be any evidence fairly tending to bear upon the issue of manslaughter, it is the province of the juiy to determine from all the evidence what the condition of mind was, and to say whether the crime was murder or manslaughter.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Branch

2. “Granting that the jury would have been justified in finding that [the accused’s] intention in going for the gun and returning with it as he did was to inflict bodily harm on [the deceased] if he did not leave, still the presumption was not an irrebuttable one, and it was for the jury to say whether [the accused’s] statement that he procured the gun only for self protection was or was not true. And if they believed from the evidence that this was true, and that the killing was under reasonable apprehension of imminent peril, then it was for the jury to determine under all the facts and circumstances whether [the accused] had committed the offense of manslaughter, rather than that of murder, if he could not be excused altogether.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 34 Va. App. 429 - Connell v. Commonwealth

3. ““When a difficulty is intentionally brought on for the purpose of killing the deceased, the fact of imminent danger to the accused constitutes no defense; but when the accused embarks in a quarrel with no felonious intent or malice or premeditated purpose of doing bodily harm or killing, and under a reasonable belief of imminent danger he inflicts a fatal wound, it is not murder.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 3 Okla. Crim. 208 - Vance v. Territory