Commonwealth v. Light’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
70 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 70 later decisions — most recently March 2022 · most notably State v. Kelly (1984), Commonwealth v. O'SEARO (1976)
70 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 Chapman v. State of California · Dilliplaine v. Lehigh Valley Trust Co. · Commonwealth v. Clair · Commonwealth v. McCusker · Commonwealth v. Zapata
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 70 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) The slayer must have been free from fault in provoking or continuing the difficulty which resulted in the killing . . . . (2) The slayer must have reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of death, great bodily harm, or some felony, and that there was a necessity to kill in order to save himself therefrom . (3) The slayer must not have violated any duty to retreat or avoid the danger . Commonwealth v. Light, 458 Pa. 328, 333 , 326 A.2d 288, 291 (1974), quoting Commonwealth v. Roundtree, 440 Pa. 199, 204 , 269 A.2d 709, 712 (1970) (citations omitted). 3”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he requirement that the defendant be operating under a reasonable belief that he is harm, or some felony, involves two elements. First, the defendant must have acted out of an honest, bona fide belief that he was in imminent danger. Second, the belief must be reasonable in light of the facts as they appeared to him. The first element is entirely subjective; the second element is entirely objective.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage““It is easy to imagine situations where* two different people could, because of differences in their subjective states of mind ‘reasonably’ react in totally different ways to the same stimulus. For example, one who, confronted on a sidewalk by a growling dog, reacts in terror because of a subjective fear of animals, is no less reasonable (based on the facts as he perceives them) in his belief that the dog is about to attack than another who, because of years of training as a veterinarian and experience in handling dogs, sees that (based on the facts as he perceives them) there is no danger. (Emphasis in original.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.