State v. Speyer’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““When we come to measure the conduct of defendant as a criminal act, we find all of the ordinary concomitants absent. We must discard at once all idea of malice in the popular sense of ill-will, hatred, or revenge, because the evidence demonstrates that up to the very moment of the unnatural deed he had displayed nothing but the natural affection of a father for a dutiful child. Likewise all semblance of provocation moving from the child is negatived. On the other hand, we find nothing in the facts which would permit us to ascribe the homicide to accident or misadventure, because all the testimony shows the deed was intentional. Those motives which ordinarily impel men to commit a crime of this character are not to be found in the case. We are, therefore, to test the defendant's homicidal act by old and settled principles of law, and apply them as best we can to these new and startling conditions. “While it is a settled principle of criminal law ■ that without a criminal intent there can be no felony, it is equally well settled that a man is presumed to intend the natural, necessary and probable consequences of what he intentionally does. The act of the defendant, then,, in intentionally killing his child with a deadly weapon is presumptively murder, unless at the time he committed the act his reason and mental powers were so deficient that he had no conception of the right or wrong of the act he was about to. commit. ’ ’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Speyer