State v. Smart’s Empirical Analysis
1959
Citation profile
26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently June 1988 · most notably State v. Davis (1983), State v. Brookshire (1962)
26 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. Henderson · State v. Graves · State v. Creighton · State v. Ferguson · State v. Burrell
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.
“[Manslaughter] may be defined as the killing of another intentionally, but in a sudden heat of passion due to adequate provocation and without malice. State v. Burrell, 298 Mo. 672 , 252 S.W. 709, 711 (2). “A provocation is deemed to be adequate, so as to reduce the offense from murder to manslaughter, whenever it is calculated to excite the passion beyond control. It must be of such a character as would, in the mind of an average just and reasonable man, stir resentment likely to cause violence endangering life, or as would naturally tend to disturb and obscure the reason and lead to action from passion rather than judgment, or to create anger, rage, sudden resentment or terror, rendering the mind incapable of reflection.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage““Where the evidence is substantial in tending to show personal violence, that is, tending to show a battery — violence to a person — initially inflicted upon the slayer by the deceased at the time of the homicide, the general rule is that a manslaughter instruction is called for; and this is true though the evidence consists of testimony of the defendant alone. Violence to the person is the standard exacted by the law as affording the basis for the inference of that heat of passion which reduces the grade of the crime in a homicide case from murder to manslaughter.” State v. Smart, supra, at 574, quoting State v. Taylor, 309 S.W.2d 621, 624 (Mo.1957).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.