17 Va. App. 68 - Smith v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently April 2024
20 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 Yarborough v. Commonwealth · McCullough v. McCullough · McGhee v. Commonwealth · Bailey v. Commonwealth · Dodson v. Commonwealth
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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[e]xcusable homicide in self-defense occurs where the accused, although in some fault in the first instance in provoking or bringing on the difficulty, when attacked retreats as far as possible, announces his desire for peace and kills his adversary from a reasonably apparent necessity to preserve his own life or save himself from great bodily harm.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Killing in self-defense may be either justifiable or excusable. If it is either, the accused is entitled to an acquittal. “Justifiable homicide in self-defense occurs [when] a person, without any fault on his part in provoking or bringing on the difficulty, kills another under reasonable apprehension of death or great bodily harm to himself.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Whether an accused proves circumstances sufficient to create a reasonable doubt that he acted in [a manner that is excused by the affirmative defense] is a question of fact.”
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.