State v. Watkins’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 85 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 92 later decisions — most recently April 2017 · most notably State v. Jarrette (1974), State v. Britt (1974)
3 federal appellate · 85 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. Waddell · State v. Baldwin · State v. Frazier · State v. Freeman · State v. . Randolph
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 92 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘The right of self-defense is available only to a person who is without fault, and if a person voluntarily, that is, aggressively and willingly, without legal provocation or excuse, enters into a fight, he cannot invoke the doctrine of self-defense unless he first abandons the fight and withdraws from it and gives notice to his adversary that he has done so.’ ” State v. Watkins, 283 N.C. 504, 511 , 196 S.E. 2d 750 (1973). (Citation omitted.)”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““The amount of punishment which a verdict of guilty will empower the judge to impose is totally irrelevant to the issue of a defendant’s guilt. It is, therefore, no concern of the jurors. [Citations omitted.] * * * “. . . In the absence of some compelling reason which makes disclosure as to punishment necessary in order ‘to keep the trial on an even keel’ and to insure complete fairness to all parties, the trial judge should not inform the jurors as to punishment in noncapital cases. If information is requested, he should refuse it and explain to them that punishment is totally irrelevant to the issue of guilt or innocence. . . .” (Emphasis added.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Hedrick“[W]here [the] defendant's evidence is sufficient to warrant a charge on self-defense, the instruction must be given even though the State's evidence is contradictory. In resolving this question the facts are to be interpreted in the light most favorable to defendant.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. McCaster
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.