Wilson v. State’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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Defendant’s Proposed Jury Instruction No. 1: The law does not allow a police officer to use more force than necessary to [ejffect an arrest, and if he does use such unnecessary force, he thereby becomes a trespasser, and an arrestee therefore may resist the arrester’s use of excessive force by the use of reasonable force to protect himself against great bodily harm or death. If you find that Officers Witt, Schlegelmilch, and Gray used more force than necessary to effectuate the arrest, then the accused was permitted to resist the arrest to such an extent as necessary to protect himself from great bodily harm or death, and you must find him not guilty of resisting law enforcement. Defendant’s Proposed Jury Instruction No. 2: An individual has a right to act upon appearances of actual and immediate danger if he sincerely believes such apparent danger exists. It need be only apparent to a reasonable person under the circumstances. He will not be accountable for an error in judgment as to the amount of force necessary, provided he acted honestly. The law protects persons who feel compelled to act at such times even though in retrospect it is proved they have erred. Defendant’s Proposed Jury Instruction No. 3: Your decision as to whether the accused was acting in self-defense must be based on what the situation appeared to be to the accused rather than what the actual facts might have been. Defendant’s Proposed Jury Instruction No. 4: The defense of self-defense is defined by the ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Mitchell Burton v. State of Indiana