Commonwealth v. Ludwig’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

60 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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Malice has been characterized as exhibiting an “extreme indifference to human life,” and “may be found to exist not only in an intentional killing, but also in an unintentional homicide where the perpetrator ‘consciously disregarded an unjustified and extremely high risk that his actions might cause death or serious bodily harm.’ ” Indeed, our Court has stated that an inference of malice is not supported even by evidence which demonstrates that a defendant acted out of anger and rage; in such a case, voluntary manslaughter, not murder, is established. Thus, the mental state of malice aforethought is significantly more than mere carelessness or neglect, or the disregard of a chance or possibility of death, and it is this special frame of mind that is required to obtain a conviction under Section 2506.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Allstate Insurance Co. v. Hopfer