23 Va. App. 537 - Long v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently January 2012
12 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 Withrow v. Williams · Sturman v. United States · Boyd v. Commonwealth · United States v. Schoon · 7 Va. App. 32 - Buckley v. City of Falls Church
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Instruction J. The defendant in this case has raised a necessity defense. The essential elements of this defense are: (1) a reasonable belief that the action was necessary to avoid threatened harm; (2) a lack of other adequate means to avoid the threatened harm; and (3) a direct causal relationship that may be reasonably anticipated between the action taken and the avoidance of the harm. If you find that the defendant was acting out of necessity, you shall find him not guilty. Instruction I. The defense of necessity addresses the dilemma created when physical forces beyond the actor’s control renders illegal conduct the lesser of the two evils. If one who is starving eats another’s food to save his own life, the defense of necessity may bar a conviction for the larceny of the other’s food. The rationale of the necessity defense is not that a person, when faced with the pressure of circumstances of nature lacks the mental element which the crime in question requires. Rather, it is based upon the public policy that the law ought to promote the achievement of higher values at the expense of lesser values, and sometimes the greater good for society will be accomplished by violating the literal language of the law. In some sense, the necessity defense allows the jury to act as individual legislature, amending a particular criminal provision or drafting a one-time exception to it, subject to court review, when a real legislature would formally do the same under those circumstances.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he legislative history of the statute manifests that the General Assembly has significantly limited the availability of the defense of necessity for individuals who use marijuana for medicinal purposes. In restricting the legitimate medicinal use of marijuana to cases involving cancer or glaucoma, the legislature evinced its intent to circumscribe the value judgment an individual can make with respect to its use for treating other conditions. To that extent, the common law defense of necessity is abrogated and unavailing in [Murphy’s] case.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[t]he common law will not be considered as altered or changed by statute unless the legislative intent is plainly manifested. A statutory change in the common law is limited to that which is expressly stated or necessarily implied because the presumption is that no change was intended. When an enactment does not encompass the entire subject covered by the common law, it abrogates the common-law rule only to the extent that its terms are directly and irreconcilably opposed to the rule.”
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.