Thomas v. Kinkead’s Empirical Analysis
1892
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 44 later decisions — most recently November 1943 · most notably Edgin v. Talley (1925), White v. Barnes (1924)
6 federal appellate · 34 state decisions — followed in 11 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 44 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The general rule is well settled, by elementary writers upon criminal law, that an officer having custody of a person charged with felony may take bis life, if it becomes absolutely necessary to do so to prevent bis escape; but be may not do tbis if be be charged simply with a misdemeanor; tbe theory of tbe law being that it is better that a misdemeanant escape than that human life be taken.””
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.