State v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

23 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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Involuntary manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being unintentionally and without malice but proximately resulting from the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to a felony, or some act done in an unlawful or culpably negligent manner . . . and where fatal consequences of the negligent act were not improbable under all the facts existent at the time. . . . “Culpable negligence under the criminal law is such recklessness or carelessness, resulting in injury or death, as imports a thoughtless disregard of consequences or a heedless indifference to the safety and rights of others.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Hefler

2. ““There was no evidence of malice, or that the defendant intended to drown the girl, but against her will and over her protest that she could not swim he pulled her into deep water where she drowned. True the defendant came near drowning also but that did not palliate his action. The fatal consequences to Dorothy Lynn Smith under the evidence must be ascribed to the defendant’s unlawful and culpably negligent conduct which it could reasonably have been foreseen was likely to result in serious injury. (Citations omitted.)” 231 N.C. at 215 , 56 S.E. 2d at 574 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Trueblood