People v. Wells’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
50 federal appellate · 418 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 486 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2018 · most notably Brown v. Allen (1953), 62 Cal. 2d 338 - People v. Dorado (1965)
50 federal appellate · 418 state decisions — followed in 18 states
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 People v. Danielly · Ash v. Soo Sing Lung · 58 Cal. App. 2d 509 - Siebel v. Shapiro · 65 Cal. App. 2d 704 - Robertson v. Bonelli · Callahan v. Marshall
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 486 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““As a general rule, on the not guilty plea, evidence, otherwise competent, tending to show that the defendant, who at this stage is conclusively presumed sane, either did or did not, in committing the overt act, possess the specific essential mental state, is admissible, but evidence tending to show legal sanity or legal insanity is not admissible. Thus, if the proffered evidence tends to show not merely that he did or did not, but rather that because of legal insanity he could not, entertain the specific intent or other essential mental state, then that evidence is inadmissible under the not guilty plea and is admissible only on the trial on the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Under the circumstances the materiality of this evidence in defendant’s case is patent. If he acted only under the influence of fear of bodily harm, in the belief, honest though unreasonable, that he was defending himself from such harm by the use of a necessary amount of force, then defendant, although he would not be guiltless of crime, would not have committed that particular aggravated offense with which he is charged, for the essential element of “malice aforethought” would be lacking. In resolving this question in a close case the jury could well be materially aided by the knowledge that, in the opinion of qualified experts, the defendant’s condition was such that he might readily have acted from genuine fear rather than from a desire for vengeance or from any other malicious purpose.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Simmons v. State
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.