Moxley v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1953
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently March 2015
2 federal appellate · 17 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 Briggs v. Commonwealth · Wilkins v. Commonwealth · Thomason v. Commonwealth · Coleman 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“If, upon being assaulted, the passion of the assaulted person become greatly excited, and under that impulse he kill his assailant, though it be with a deadly weapon, the offence [sic] is manslaughter only. Yet should his resistance with a deadly weapon be made in a very cruel manner, not at all justified by the nature of the assault, the inference would be that malice, not passion, impelled the blow making his crime murder.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]t is usually the province of the [fact finder] to decide whether or not malice exists in the killing and thus determine the grade of homicide.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]n every unlawful killing, if it be unaccompanied by circumstances of palliation, malice is implied from the act of killing.”
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.