State v. Stevenson’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently August 2017 · most notably State v. McCarver (1995), State v. Conner (1994)
28 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. Odom · State v. Artis · State v. Walker · State v. Strickland · State v. Cummings
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We emphasize again that although'it is for the jury to determine, from the evidence, whether a killing was done with premeditation and deliberation, the mere possibility of a negative finding does not, in every case, assume that defendant could be guilty of a lesser offense. Where the evidence belies anything other than a premeditated and deliberate killing, a jury’s failure to find all the elements to support a verdict of guilty of first degree murder must inevitably lead to the conclusion that the jury disbelieved the State’s evidence and that defendant is not guilty. The determinative factor is what the State’s evidence tends to prove. If the evidence is sufficient to fully satisfy the State’s burden of proving each and every element of the offense of murder in the first degree, including premeditation and deliberation, and there is no evidence to negate these elements other than defendant’s denial that he committed the offense, the trial judge should properly exclude from jury consideration the possibility of a conviction of second degree murder.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Thomas · State v. Annadale“The above-cited instruction was delivered straight from the North Carolina Pattern Jury Instructions. N.C.P.I. — Crim. 206.10. The elements listed are merely examples of circumstances which, if found, the jury could use to infer premeditation and deliberation.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“If, however, there was any positive evidence tending to support the lesser included offense of second-degree murder, then it was the trial court's duty to submit a possible verdict for that lesser included offense after appropriate instructions.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Cummings
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.