State v. Close’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 65 later decisions — most recently May 2024 · most notably State v. Austad (1982), State v. Gladue (1999)
64 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 Blockburger v. United States · North Carolina v. Pearce · Sandstrom v. Montana · Brown v. Ohio · United States v. Jorn
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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Given this rationale for the felony murder doctrine, it strains credulity to hold that the underlying felony merges into the felony murder. The statute proscribing the underlying felony-robbery, for example-is designed to protect a wholly different societal interest from the felony murder statute, which is intended to protect against homicide. The underlying felony is an essential element of felony murder only because without it the homicide might be second degree murder or manslaughter. Clearly, neither manslaughter nor second degree murder merges with any other felony like robbery or assisting a prisoner to escape.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent““ ‘the law has invested Courts of justice with the authority to discharge a jury from giving any verdict, whenever, in their opinion, taking all the circumstances into consideration, there is a manifest necessity for the act, or the ends of public justice would otherwise be defeated. They are to exercise a sound discretion on the subject ... [T]he power ought to be used with the greatest caution, under urgent circumstances, and for very plain and obvious causes; ’ ” State v. Close (1981), [ 191 Mont. 229 ,] 623 P.2d 940, 945-46 , 38 St.Rep. 177 , 183.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Doney““.. .An intoxicated or drugged condition may be taken into consideration in determining the existence of a mental state which is an element of the offense.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. State v. Doney
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.