Neal v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In this ease, the defendant, as one of his defenses, says that at the time of the difficulty, he, the said defendant, was justified and in doing as he did, he was acting in his necessary self defense to protect himself from the unlawful attack of his adversary, and when a person is unlawfully attacked in such manner as to induce in him a reasonable belief that he is in danger of losing his life, or of suffering great bodily harm, he is not required to retreat, but has the right to stand his ground and use whatever force that seems necessary to repel the attack in order to save himself from death, or to prevent what appears to him to be great bodily injury threatened to himself, but he should at the time use all reasonable means, apparent to a reasonable person under the circumstances, to avoid such danger, before injuring any person. It is not necessary for this defense that the defendant’s danger should have been actual or real, all that is necessary is that the defendant, from his standpoint, and under all the circumstances in the case, had reasonable cause to believe, and did honestly believe, there was imminent danger to his life or of great bodily injury being done to him, and in determining whether or not the defendant acted in his own necessary self defense, you shall view the circumstances as they then existed from the standpoint of the defendant, and viewing the circumstances from that standpoint, you shall determine whether or not he was acting reasonably in his own”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Davis v. State