Commonwealth v. Colandro’s Empirical Analysis
1911
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 145 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 151 later decisions — most recently April 2010 · most notably 25 Cal. 3d 668 - People v. Flannel (1979), 7 Cal. 4th 768 - People v. Christian S. (1994)
5 federal appellate · 145 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 Commonwealth v. Drum · Alexander v. Commonwealth · Commonwealth v. Kaiser · Commonwealth v. Wireback · Fletcher v. State
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 151 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The dividing line between self-defense and ... [voluntary] manslaughter seems to be the existence, as the moving force, of a reasonably founded belief of imminent peril to life or great bodily harm, as distinguished from the influence of an uncontrollable fear or terror, conceivable as existing, but not reasonably justified by the immediate circumstances.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Morgan v. State“[A]nger and terror provided they reach a degree of intensity sufficient to obscure temporarily the reason of the person affected.... Passion, as used in a charge defining manslaughter ... means any of the emotions of the mind known as anger, rage, sudden resentment or terror, rendering the mind incapable of cool reflection____”
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.