Commonwealth v. Tejeda’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 11 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The statue [sic] defining murder allows you to find the defendant guilty of first degree murder if you find the Commonwealth has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant unlawfully killed the victim in the commission of or attempted commission of a crime, punishable by principle of law. This principle' of law is known as the felony murder rule. The effect of the felony murder rule is to substitute the intent to commit the underlying felony for the malice aforethought as defined earlier required for murder. In order to find the defendant guilty of first degree murder under the felony murder rule, the Commonwealth must prove the following three elements beyond a reasonable doubt. One, that there was an unlawful killing, two, that the killing was committed while the defendant was in the course of committing or attempting to commit a felony punishable by imprisonment for life, and three, that under the circumstances of this case, the defendant committed or attempted to commit the felony with the conscious disregard for human life.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lucien v. Spencer