Wilkins v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1940
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently March 2016
2 federal appellate · 16 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 Richardson v. Commonwealth · Byrd v. Commonwealth · Brown 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]here a homicide is committed in the course of a sudden quarrel, or mutual combat, or upon a sudden provocation and without any previous grudge, and the killing is from the sudden heat of passion growing solely out of the quarrel, or combat, or provocation, it is not murder, but is [voluntary] manslaughter ... if there be no further justification, and involuntary manslaughter if the killing be done in the commission of some lawful act, such as in justifiable self-defense.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.