State v. Gardner’s Empirical Analysis
1951
Citation profile
44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently February 2011 · most notably State v. Pittman (2007), State v. Wiggins (1998)
44 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. Jones · Commonwealth v. Trippi · State v. Edwards · State v. Judge · State v. Gilstrap
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It may be concluded, therefore, that ‘the sudden heat and passion, upon sufficient legal provocation,’ which mitigates a felonious killing to manslaughter, while it need not dethrone reason entirely, or shut out knowledge and volition, must be such as would naturally disturb the sway of reason, and render the mind of an ordinary person incapable of cool reflection, and produce what, according to human experience, may be called an uncontrollable impulse to do violence. * * *””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“... In determining whether the act which caused death was impelled by heat of passion or by malice, all the surrounding circumstances and conditions are to be taken into consideration, including previous relations and conditions connected with the tragedy, as well as those existing at the time of the killing. . . . Our decisions are uniformly to the effect that where death is caused by the use of a deadly weapon, words alone, however opprobrious, are not sufficient to constitute a legal provocation. [Cites Omitted]”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Lowry
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.