State v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently June 2019
22 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. Bush · State v. Maynor
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he defendant is not entitled to an instruction on self-defense while still insisting that he did not fire the pistol at anyone, that he did not intend to shoot anyone and that he did not know anyone had been shot. Clearly, a reasonable person believing that the use of deadly force was necessary to save his or her life would have pointed the pistol at the perceived threat and fired at the perceived threat. The defendant's own testimony, therefore, disproves the first element of self-defense.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“'[p]erfect self-defense' is available only if 'it appeared to defendant that he believed it to be necessary to kill the attacker in order to save himself from death or great bodily harm[.]'”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“Defendant testified that he saw Staton reach for his belt as if reaching for a pistol. However, defendant also testified that he never actually saw Staton with a pistol. Other than the defendant’s self-serving claim that he thought Staton was reaching for a weapon, the evidence shows only that Staton approached the scene and inquired, “What’s up?” repetitively. The record is totally void of any evidence showing that Staton had a pistol or threatened defendant in any manner. There is no evidence that the victim ever had a weapon or made any threatening gesture toward the defendant. Finally, the evidence shows that the defendant fired three shots. After the first shot was fired, the victim turned and began to run away. The victim was struck, in the back, by the third shot. The fact that the victim was shot in the back while attempting to run from the scene is significant. It is entirely unreasonable to believe that a person of ordinary firmness would have considered the use of deadly force necessary to protect himself or herself from an unarmed person who was running from the scene..... Even assuming that the defendant’s fear was real, it did not justify a preemptive strike against an unarmed individual. Thus, the second element of perfect self-defense is not reflected in the evidence.”
2 later decisions 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.