Cox v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently February 2000
8 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 Carson v. Commonwealth · Smith v. Commonwealth · Allee v. Commonwealth · Thorpe v. Commonwealth · Tarrence v. Commonwealth
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Included in the instructions of the court were ones for murder, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter in the first and second degrees. The court failed to instruct the jury as required by RCr 9.56 that if it had a reasonable doubt as to the degree of the offense which the defendant had committed, he should be convicted of the lower degree. We have held many times that failure to give that instruction is reversible error. . . . It is well established, however, that if the evidence points only to the conclusion that the accused is guilty of but one offense, it is not necessary or proper to give instructions embracing lower degrees. ... It follows that in such instances it would not be necessary or proper to give the instruction relative to finding the accused guilty of the lower degree.””
1 later decision 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.