Pritchett v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1853
Citation profile
31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 1984 · most notably Storey v. State (1882), Smith v. State (1916)
31 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.
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“however bad or desperate [the] character [of the deceased] may be, and however many threats such person may have made, he forfeits no right to his life, until by an actual attempt to execute his threats, or by some act or demonstration at the time of killing, taken in connection with such character or threats, he induces a reasonable belief on the part of the slayer that it is necessary to deprive him of life in order to save his own, or to prevent some felony upon his person.”
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.