State v. Knoll’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"There is, of course, no fixed standard, either of cruelty or of wontedness of manner, by which homicides may be measured, and yet the legislature evidently attached much meaning to the distinction which it indicated by the use of the words quoted. By section 26 of the crimes act (Gen. Stat. 1901, § 2011) the involuntary killing of another in the heat of passion by means neither cruel nor unusual is made manslaughter in the fourth degree. The punishment for manslaughter accomplished in a cruel and unusual manner is confinement and hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than three nor more than five years, while that for manslaughter by means neither cruel nor unusual is confinement and hard labor in the penitentiary not exceeding three years, or by imprisonment in the county jail for not less than six months. Cruelty and an unusual manner are therefore vital and essential elements of manslaughter in the second degree. To be such, however, they cannot be discovered in the common pitilessness and pain attending homicides generally, nor in the departure from ordinary use involved in turning common weapons or common instruments or methods of accomplishment to the killing of human beings. Fatal shootings and stabbings and poundings, mutilations of flesh and fractures of bones are all cruel enough, and they cannot be said to represent the usual demeanor of men; hence something more must have been intended. Special stress and emphasis must be imposed upon the words used in orde”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Diggs

2. “"In the facts of this case it is somewhat difficult to discover a sufficient viciousness of mind on the part of the defendant, and a sufficiently grievous effect upon the deceased, to amount to that cruelty which the statute requires. Although severe pain was inflicted without necessity, and although there was not merely an indifference to such pain but a certain savage pleasure in causing it, still there is no more atrocity and no more peculiar or extreme agony than might be exhibited in, and result from, any drunken brawl. "Conceding, however, as upon the whole it is probably wisest to do, that the spectacle of a burly, drunken bully crushing to the floor a weak and sickly cripple, snapping a bone and mauling his flesh, is too revolting to pass for less than that extreme cruelty which the law contemplates, the court is unable to say that the manner in which it was accomplished was unusual. Nothing but unaided bodily strength and energy, used according to the common custom of fighting men, appears. The fact that a leg was broken does not change the character of the means employed to break it. Death must always result to complete the crime, and if the deceased's back or neck had been broken, or his body had been crushed by his fall or as a result of his beating, the circumstance would not have changed the character of the offense, unless perhaps the force displayed had been so tremendous as to become phenomenal. Such an exhibition could scarcely occur with those staggering, w”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. State v. Diggs

3. ““The killing of a human being without a design to effect death, in the heat of passion, but in a cruel and unusual manner, unless it be committed under such circumstances as to constitute excusable or justifiable homicide, shall be deemed manslaughter in the second degree.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Linville