State v. Magers’s Empirical Analysis
1899
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently June 1947
16 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 Stokes v. . People of the State of N.Y. · State v. Bartmess · Stoball v. State · State v. Dickson · State v. Moran
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The statute, Hill’s Ann. Laws, §200, in prescribing the method of giving instructions, reads as follows: “ ‘In charging the jury, the court shall state to them all matters of law which it thinks necessary for their information in giving their verdict, but it shall not present the facts of the case, but shall inform the jury that they are the exclusive judges of all questions of fact.’ Notwithstanding which, the rule is well settled that on a trial of a person for the crime of murder, if there is no evidence tending to reduce the homicide to manslaughter, it is not incumbent upon the court to charge with reference to the lesser crime; but if there is any evidence, direct or indirect, however slight it may be, that tends in any manner to show that the killing was done in the heat of passion, or under such circumstances as to eliminate the element of malice, prejudicial error is committed if the court fail or refuse to instruct the jury upon the law applicable to manslaughter.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Henderson““The rule to be extracted from these decisions seems to be that if the manner of the killing is unknown, and circumstantial evidence only is relied upon to connect the defendant with the commission of the crime, it is the duty of the court, when so requested, to instruct the jury upon the law applicable to murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, and manslaughter, and where it appears that the defendant has committed a crime, and there is reasonable ground of doubt in which of two or more degrees he is guilty, he can be convicted of the lowest of these degrees only.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Farnam
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.