Thomas v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
107 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 107 later decisions — most recently December 2018 · most notably Salazar v. State (2001), Moody v. State (1992)
107 state decisions
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.
Relationships
Relies on Royster v. State · Aguilar v. State · Simpkins v. State · Lugo v. State · Bell v. State
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 107 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor’s standpoint.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Dowden v. State · Barcenes v. State“Evidence that a defendant knows a gun is loaded, that he is familiar with guns and their potential for injury, and that he points a gun at another, indicates a person who is aware of a risk created by that conduct and disregards that risk.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Dowden v. State · Hayes v. State“[C]onscious risk creation, that is, the actor is aware of the risk surrounding his conduct or the results thereof, but consciously disregards that risk. Criminal negligence ... involves inattentive risk creation, that is, the actor ought to be aware of the risk surrounding his conduct or the results thereof. At the heart of reckless conduct is conscious disregard of the risk created by the actor’s conduct; the key to criminal negligence is found in the failure of the actor to perceive the risk.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.