State v. Cole’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

56 state decisions

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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The sudden heat of passion, upon sufficient legal provocation, which mitigates a felonious killing to manslaughter, while it need not dethrone reason entirely, or shut out knowledge and volition, must be such as would naturally disturb the sway of reason, and render the mind of an ordinary person incapable of cool reflection, and produce what, according to human experience, may be called an uncontrollable impulse to do violence.””

   7 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Grubbs · State v. Cottrell

2. “that to warrant the court in eliminating the offense of manslaughter it should very clearly appear that there is no evidence whatever tending to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Reese · State v. Cottrell

3. “[e]ven if [the defendant] had been in the heat of passion during the confrontation in his apartment, three to five minutes had passed in which he had time to go to his mother's apartment and find his gun. Far from passion, these actions indicate "cool reflection." [The defendant] admitted that in the time between when [the victim's friend] and the victim went out the front door and he went out the back, he had "time enough for me to get my head together." Most significantly, the men had been gone for several minutes when [the defendant] shot and killed the victim.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Knoten