Commonwealth v. Harrington’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Well, of course, first of all, it is undisputed here that Mott was not armed and he was in his own house and he had a right to be there; and Harrington came in there uninvited. If there was a fight and a struggle, what started it? That is important when you talk about self-defense, because a defendant who pleads self-defense cannot be the aggressor, he can’t plead self-defense in killing a person if he, himself, was the aggressor. “Self-defense is available to a defendant only under these circumstances: If the defendant was not the aggressor and he had reasonable grounds to believe and actually did believe that he was in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm; and that he could save himself only by using deadly force. Then and then only has he a right to employ deadly force in his own defense. That is for you to consider.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Harrington