State v. Heit’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently August 2012
14 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 State v. Miller · State v. Baugh · State v. Ostwald · State v. McDonald · State v. Thornton
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1)A person commits the offense of mitigated deliberate homicide when he purposely or knowingly causes the death of another human being but does so under the influence of extreme mental or emotional stress for which there is reasonable explanation or excuse. The reasonableness of such explanation or excuse shall be determined from the viewpoint of a reasonable person in the actor’s situation. (2) It is an affirmative defense that the defendant acted under the influence of extreme mental or emotional stress for which there was reasonable explanation or excuse, the reasonableness of which shall be determined from the viewpoint of a reasonable person in the actor’s situation. This defense constitutes a mitigating circumstance reducing deliberate homicide to mitigated deliberate homicide and must be proved by the defendant by a preponderance of the evidence. (3) Mitigated deliberate homicide is not an included offense of deliberate homicide as defined in 45-5-102(l)(b). In State v. Heit (1990), 242 Mont. 488 , 791 P.2d 1379 , we held that: Generally, “a defendant is entitled to instructions on lessor [sic] included offenses if any evidence exists in the record which would permit the jury to rationally find him guilty of a lessor [sic] offense and acquit him of a greater.” State v. Thornton (1985), 218 Mont. 317, 320 , 708 P.2d 273, 276 [ ] (quoting State v. Ostwald (1979), 180 Mont. 530, 538 , 591 P.2d 646, 651 ). Under this rule, in order to find Heit guilty of a lesser offense,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Williams
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.