Harvey v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Instruction No. 6 stated in effect that appellant could not rely on the right of self-defense or defense of his associates named in the instruction if after having trouble with deceased, he and his associates left and later returned to the scene of the original difficulty and ‘commenced’ a second dif-. ficulty with deceased at a time when they were determined to and did engage in a conflict with him by mutual consent. Where in a homicide case there is evidence tending to show that the accused and deceased mutually and voluntarily engaged in a combat with the intention on the part of each to kill or to do great bodily harm to the other, or that accused sought or brought on the difficulty, it is proper to modify a self-defense instruction. See Hobson, etc., on Instructions to Juries, sections 765 and 766 and cases thereunder cited, a number of which hold that such modified instructions are erroneous which contain expressions ‘brought on the difficulty,’ ‘began the-affray,’ etc., without describing the manner or means by which the difficulty was ‘brought on,’ etc., or the ‘affray begun.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. McDaniels v. Commonwealth

2. “It has been uniformly held by this court that one accused of a crime may introduce evidence tending to prove that the crime was committed by another,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Davenport v. Commonwealth