Logan v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In instruction No. 1 the court told the jury, in substance, to find appellant guilty of willful murder if they believed from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, that before the finding of the indictment he did ‘unlawfully, willfully, feloniously, and of his malice aforethought shoot and' wound Sarah King, or shoot at Thomas King and missed him, but hit 'Sarah King, ’ etc. In view of another trial we deem it proper to say that the words ‘unlawfully, willfully, feloniously, and of his malice aforethought’ should be repeated after the word ‘or’’ and before the word ‘shoot’ in the clause, ‘or shoot at Thomas King and missed him, ’ so that the jury may clearly understand that, before they can convict appellant of murder on the ground that he shot at Thomas King and hit Sarah King, they should further believe that he unlawfully, willfully, feloniously, and of his malice aforethought shot at Thomas King. For the same reason the qualifying words ‘without malice, did willfully and feloniously, in sudden affray, or in sudden heat and passion,’ in the instruction on manslaughter, should be repeated after the word ‘or’ and before the word ‘shoot’ in the clause ‘or shoot at Thomas King and missed him.’’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Clark v. Commonwealth