May v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1967
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently August 1980
24 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 McBee v. State · Holt v. State · Cooper v. State · Nance v. State · Arterburn 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“After the peril to the victim has passed, as in the case when he has disarmed the original aggressor, and he then proceeds to beat the original aggressor to death, the victim cannot claim a killing in self-defense, since the necessity for killing did not exist at the time the killing occurred.’ 1. Wharton’s Criminal Law and Procedure, sec. 214 (1957)””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“. . Implicit in this argument [that the danger of death or great bodily harm to the defendant had ceased] is the well settled law of homicide that one cannot go further than is reasonably necessary in defense of his person. In others words, the right to kill in self-defense begins where the necessity begins and ends where the necessity ends.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““The right to kill in self-defense begins where the necessity begins and ends where the necessity ends.” May v. State, 220 Tenn. 541 , 420 S.W.2d 647 .”
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.