Fielder v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 65 later decisions — most recently June 2016 · most notably State v. Borrelli (1993), Duckett v. State (1990)
64 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 Werner v. State · 159 Tex. Crim. 602 - Dempsey v. State · Denham v. State · Holloway v. State · Thompson 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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In all prosecutions for murder or voluntary manslaughter, the state or the defendant shall be permitted to offer testimony as to all relevant facts and circumstances surrounding the killing and the previous relationship existing between the accused and the deceased, together with all relevant facts and circumstances going to show the condition of the mind of the accused at the time of the offense.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Bush v. State · Henderson v. State“average lay person has no basis for understanding the conduct of a woman who endures an abusive relationship”); see also Fed.R.Evid. 702 advisory committee note (”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Coble v. State · In Re ECL“[Fielder’s] theory of the case was that she had suffered tortuous physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her husband; that this violent prior relationship convinced her he could and would kill her if she disclosed his sexual proclivities to anyone else; that on the night of the homicide, when she revealed she had discussed their relationship with an attorney, she tried to run away, but he pulled a firearm and indicated verbally he would make good on past threats to kill her; that because of her fear and belief he would kill her, when given the opportunity, she grabbed the gun and shot him to death. The State’s theory was that [Fielder] was a competent professional woman who was madly in love with her husband; that even though Darwin went a bit too far in his sex “games”, [she] willingly participated in and enjoyed most of them. Thus, [Fielder’s] prior relationship with Darwin did not produce in her a fear of him as she claimed, but rather, when she found out he was involved with another woman, she pulled a gun and shot her husband in a jealous rage. Thus, of the four “condition of mind” issues which were raised by the parties’ respective theories, the only one which was contested was the reasonableness of [Fielder’s] apprehension of fear that Darwin was about to use deadly force against her at the time of his killing. This was the main contested issue in the case. Viewed in this context and in light of the trial testimony as a whole, it is clear that the inferen”
1 later decision 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.