Mills v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The rule is that the accused cannot be acquitted on the ground of self-defense if he and the deceased voluntarily engaged in a mutual combat with the intention of killing each other. The language of the proviso is ‘that the defendant . . ' . engaged in a shooting difficulty with the deceased. . . .’ It does not embrace the necessary elements of the mutual combat rule, or submit the theory of mutual combat to the jury. On the contrary, it makes no mention of any participation by the deceased, but takes away the right of self-defense, if appellant voluntarily engaged in the difficulty, and that, too, through appellant’s conduct may have been wholly justifiable. . . . The latter part of proviso is also subject to the criticism that it does not embrace the idea that the acts therein referred to were done by appellant at a time when he did not believe, or have reasonable grounds to believe, that he was then and there in danger of death or some great bodily harm at the hands of the deceased, or other equivalent words.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Gambrel v. Commonwealth