Bevley v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1946
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently April 2014
15 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 State v. Clark · State v. Hardin · 118 W. Va. 118 - State v. Summers · Thomas v. Commonwealth · Stapleton 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]hen a person reasonably apprehends that another intends to attack him for the purpose of killing him or doing him serious bodily harm, then such person has a right to arm himself for his own necessary self-protection, and in such case, no inference of malice can be drawn from the fact he prepared for it.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]hen a jury is told that the law presumes that a person using a deadly weapon to kill another acts with malice and throws upon the accused the burden of disproving malice, then the accused is entitled as a matter of law to have the jury instructed that he has overcome the presumption, if they believe the evidence offered in his behalf.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“the law presumes a person using a deadly weapon to kill another acted with malice, and„the burden is thrown upon the person so using a deadly weapon to overcome this presumption. But if upon consideration of all the evidence you have a reasonable doubt as to whether he acted with malice or not you should not find him guilty of murder.”
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.