Carter v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Self-defense, in order to constitute a successful defense to a criminal prosecution of this nature [manslaughter], requires that the defendant act in response to an urgent actual threat or on a reasonable belief that such threat is actual and imminent. Wadford v. State, 385 So.2d 951, 955 (Miss.1980). Because the assessments of the level and imminence of the threat to the defendant’s physical well-being and the appropriateness of the defendant’s level of response to the perceived danger require interpretation and analysis of the peculiar set of facts presented in a particular case, it is well settled that the reasonableness of the defendant’s actions is normally a matter for the jury sitting as finders of fact. Meshell v. State, 506 So.2d 989, 991-92 (Miss.1987). While it may be true, as an abstract proposition, that there could be a case where the evidence of the gravity of the threat and the reasonableness of the defendant’s reaction to it was so persuasive that no reasonable juror could disregard that evidence, we do not conclude this to be that case. Rather, the case appears to have been vigorously tried on the issue of self-defense, the jury was properly instructed on the law, and, insofar as the record shows, resolved this issue by concluding that Carter, beyond any reasonable doubt, was not acting in necessary self-defense when he purposely fired three gunshots at close range into his victim, causing his death.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 64 So. 3d 1029 - Williams v. State