State v. Fletcher’s Empirical Analysis
1966
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently June 2019
20 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. Marshall Norman Hicks · State v. Anderson · State v. Warren · State v. Sandlin · State v. Cloer
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... In final result, it charged the jury that one is never privileged by law to employ force in self-protection unless he is threatened with death or great bodily harm. * * * The law does not compel any man to submit in meekness to indignities or violence to his person merely because such indignities or violence stop short of threatening him with death or great bodily harm. If one is without fault in provoking, or engaging in, or continuing a difficulty with another, he is privileged by the law of self-defense to use such force against the other as is actually or reasonably necessary under the circumstances to protect himself from bodily injury or offensive physical contact at the hands of the other, even though he is not thereby put in actual or apparent danger of death or great bodily harm.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Moreover, the court’s instructions imply defendant could not lawfully use force in self-defense unless he was threatened with death or great bodily harm. We find no instruction with reference to the right of defendant to defend himself against a nonfelonious assault. Failure to instruct the jury with reference to defendant’s right of self-defense in respect of repelling a nonfelonious assault is prejudicial error.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Clay“Now, Members of the Jury, the burden is on the defendant to prove self-defense to the satisfaction of the Jury and to prove he used no more force than was or reasonably appeared necessary under the circumstances to protect himself from death or great bodily harm.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Turner
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.