State v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
210 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 214 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably State v. Smith (1997), State v. Palmer (1997)
210 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 State v. Shane · State v. Williford · State v. Robbins · State v. Koss · 101 Wash. 2d 591 - State v. Allery
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 214 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'(1) [he or the other person who was being defended] was not at fault in creating the violent situation, (2) [he] had a bona fide belief that [another] was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that [the] only means of escape was the use of force, and (3) that the defendant did not violate any duty to retreat or avoid the danger.'”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he jury first must consider the defendant's situation objectively, that is, whether, considering all of the defendant's particular characteristics, knowledge, or lack of knowledge, circumstances, history, and conditions at the time of the attack [he] reasonably believed [he] was in imminent danger.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“there is no duty to retreat from one's own home before resorting to lethal force in self-defense against a cohabitant with an equal right to be in the home.”
7 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.