Shannahan v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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

1. ““* * * men of violent passions and wicked designs would avail themselves of this very principle of law, by becoming drunk in order to take the lives of their fellowmen, with the consciousness on the part of the offender that his drunkenness would be the mitigating feature of his case. The recognition of such a rule of law is but an invitation to men of reckless habits to commit crime; and while their punishment is by incarceration only in the state prison for a few years, the sober man, whose cause for revenge and the desire to take human life therefor is kept within his own breast, for the commission of a like offense is made to suffer death. There is no reason or philosophy in a law that would hang the sober man for murder, and lessen the punishment of the man intoxicated for the same offense, because the latter had voluntarily placed himself in a condition by which he is induced to take human life.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. De Berry v. Commonwealth