Davis v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 state decisions

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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is insisted by counsel for the defendant that the word ‘wilfully,’ as used in this statute, means more than it has been held to mean in other cases; that it means not only that the act causing the injury was intentional, but that the party inflicting the injury intended the probable result of the act. In other words, that it means a specific intent on the part of the person inflicting the injury to maim the person injured, or that the person inflicting the injury must have known at the time that the means used by him was calculated to maim. “If this had been a prosecution for an assault with intent to maim, the specific intention to maim would be essential, and it would have been error if the court had failed to so instruct the jury. But where, as in this case, the maiming was actually effected, if the act was committed with the evil intent, with legal malice, without reasonable ground for believing it to be lawful, and without legal justification, it was wilful and malicious, whether or not it was committed with a specific intent to maim. And if the means used in the commission of the offense were such as would, in the manner used, ordinarily result in maiming, the law presumes that the intention was to maim (Penal Code, Art. 50), without regard to the knowledge of the party using such means as to whether or not the same were calculated to maim.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 148 Tex. Crim. 630 - Corson v. State