People v. Aaron’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
52 federal appellate · 114 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 230 later decisions — most recently August 2020 · most notably 46 Cal. 3d 919 - People v. Bean (1988), People v. Carines (1999)
52 federal appellate · 114 state decisions — followed in 23 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.
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 230 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In the past, the felony-murder rule has been employed where unforeseen or accidental deaths occur and where the state seeks to prove vicarious liability of co-felons. In situations involving the vicarious liability of co-felons, the individual liability of each felon must be shown. It is fundamentally unfair and in violation of basic principles of individual criminal culpability to hold one felon liable for the unforeseen and unagreed-to results of another felon. In cases where the felons are acting intentionally or recklessly in pursuit of a common plan, the felony-murder rule is unnecessary because liability may be established on agency principles.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“"A felony-murder rule that punishes all homicides committed in the perpetration of a felony whether the death is intentional, unintentional or accidental, without the necessity of proving the relation of the perpetrator's state of mind to the homicide, violates the most fundamental principle of the criminal law'criminal liability for causing a particular result is not justified in the absence of some culpable mental state in respect to that result.'"”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“malice is the intention to kill, the intention to do great bodily harm, or the wanton and willful disregard of the likelihood that the natural tendency of defendant's behavior is to cause death or great bodily harm. We further hold that malice is an essential element of any murder . . . whether the murder occurs in the course of a felony or otherwise.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.