175 W. Va. 16 - State v. Saunders’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently December 2005
13 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 154 W. Va. 771 - State v. Collins · 162 W. Va. 103 - State v. Bolling · 464 So. 2d 298 - State v. Matthews · State v. Kirtley · Commonwealth v. Gray
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘Instructions in a criminal case which are confusing, misleading or incorrectly state the law should not be given.’ Syllabus Point 3, State v. Bolling, 162 W.Va. 103 , 246 S.E.2d 631 (1978).””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“What one may lawfully do in defense of himselfwhen threatened with death or great bodily harm, he may do in behalf of a brother; but if the brother was in fault in provoking an assault, that brother must retreat as far as he safely can, before his brother would be justified in taking the life of his assailant in his defense of the brother. But if the brother was so drunk as not to be mentally able to know his duty to retreat, or was physically unable to retreat, a brother is not bound to stand by and see him killed or suffer great bodily harm, because he does not under such circumstances retreat. It is only the faultless, who are exempt from the necessity of retreating while acting in self-defense. Those in fault must retreat, if able to do so; if from the fierceness of the attack or for other reasons they are unable to retreat, they will be excused by the law for not doing so.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[t]he right to defense of another usually falls under the rubric of self-defense. One simply steps into the shoes of the victim and is able to do only as much as the victim himself would lawfully be permitted to do.”
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.