People v. Flanagan’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 district · 16 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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Either an intent or endeavor to execute such a design will be sufficient to justify resistance for prevention, in defense of person or property. The law of self-defense is a law of necessity; and that necessity must be real or apparently real. A party acting under it may act upon appearances; and he will be justifiable in acting upon them, even though they turn out to have been false. Whether they were real or apparently real is for the jury, in a criminal case, to decide upon all the circumstances out of which the necessity springs. If from all the evidence in the case they should find that the circumstances were such as to excite the fears of a reasonable man, and that the defendant, acting under the influence of such fears, killed the aggressor to prevent the commission of a felony upon his person or property, he would not be criminally responsible for his death, although the circumstances might be insufficient to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the aggressor was actually about to commit a felony. ’ ’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. People v. Reese