Ex Parte Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1925
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 49 later decisions — most recently November 1989 · most notably Lester v. State (1960), Vaughn v. State (1974)
2 federal appellate · 47 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 Roberson v. State · McGhee v. State · 19 Ala. App. 432 - Baker v. State · Bush v. Bumgardner · Perry v. State
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 49 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In homicide cases, where self-defense is relied upon — the state having made out a prima facie case of intentional killing by evidence which does not itself tend to show that the killing was done in self-defense — the burden rests upon the defendant to offer some evidence tending to show (1) that he was in actual and imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm, or that he honestly and reasonably believed that he was in such danger by reason of circumstances apparent to him; and (2) that he was apparently unable to retreat in safety, or without increasing his peril. “The defendant’s burden in this behalf has often been loosely referred to as the burden of proving self-defense, and sometimes as the burden of reasonably satisfying the jury of the existence of the two elements above referred to. But the actual burden is not a burden of proof, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, to establish an issue to the reasonable satisfaction of the jury, but a burden merely of offering enough evidence tending to show these two elements to generate, in connection with all the other evidence,- a reasonable doubt of defendant’s guilt of the unlawful killing charged.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““The burden rests upon this defendant to satisfy the jury that two of the elements of self-defense existed; with regard to self-defense there are two points about which the defendant must satisfy you — he must satisfy you that before he struck to kill the danger existed, either the real or reasonably apparent danger, and then he must satisfy you that to have retreated would have increased his peril, or that it would have so appeared to a reasonable man placed as he then was. * * * And the burden is upon him to establish the existence of these two elements; he must reasonably satisfy -you there.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.