Brightwell v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “—That the defendant maliciously perpetrated, —an assault, —upon another human being, —while armed with a dangerous or deadly weapon.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Edge v. State · Simmons v. State

2. ““In Brown v. State, Wyo., 590 P.2d 1312 (1979), we were called upon to decide the effect of the ‘including an unloaded firearm’ language in § 6-4-506(b), supra, which had been added to § 6-70B, W.S. 1957, in 1975 and thus made an element of our aggravated-assault law. In that case, we determined that the effect of the amendment was to change the ‘present ability’ element in § 6-4-501, supra, to that of ‘apparent ability.’ Id., 590 P.2d at 1315 . We did not find that the added language was intended by the legislature as an adoption of a second type of assault. In Fuller v. State, Wyo., 568 P.2d 900, 904 (1977), we stated that ‘[b]y its statutes, Wyoming has limited criminal assault to attempted battery. ’ Our decision in Brown did not change this. Thus, even though the trend in the law of criminal assault is to punish not only the attempted-battery type but also the intentional-apprehension-of-fear type, which is more in the nature of the tort concept of assault, the Wyoming legislature has not yet adopted this latter approach.” (Footnote omitted and emphasis added.) 631 P.2d at 1049 .”

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

3. “A deadly weapon is one likely to produce death or great bodily injury. [Citations omitted] If it appears that the instrumentality is capable of being used in a deadly or dangerous manner and it may be fairly inferred from the evidence that its possessor intended on a particular occasion to use it as a weapon should the circumstances require, its character as a dangerous or deadly weapon may be thus established, at least for the purposes of that occasion.”

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