Worthington v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1901
Citation profile
41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently September 2021 · most notably 4 Md. App. 236 - State v. Gibson (1968), Edwards v. State (1951)
41 state decisions — followed in 15 states
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 Davis v. State · Peoples v. Commonwealth · People v. Olmstead · People v. Simpson · Yundt v. People
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In Regina v. Gaylor, 7 Cox’s Criminal Cases, 253, decided in 1857, the indictment was for manslaughter by abortion, and the prisoner was convicted. The evidence showed that the prisoner was clearly guilty of being accessory before the fact to the woman taking the drug with intent to procure an abortion, and the Judge reserved the case for the opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeal. It was heard before POLLOCK, C. B., BRAMWELL and WATSON, BB., and ERLE and WILLES, JJ. ERLE, J., before whom the case was tried, said: ‘This would, in my opinion, be murder if she died in consequence of taking that drug. But the grand jury found that it was manslaughter. If a man is indicted for manslaughter, and it turns out to be murder, he may be found guilty of manslaughter. In this case I thought he was guilty of murder by administering the drug, and might therefore be convicted of manslaughter.’ “The Judges affirmed the conviction, but without giving their reasons for doing so. “If the present indictment had been for murder, as it is contended it should have been, there can be no doubt a conviction of manslaughter would have been good; State v. Flannigan, 6 Md. 167 ; State v. Davis, 39 Md. 355 ; so that the defendant is in the singular position of complaining of an indictment because it does not subject him to conviction for a graver offense than that with which he is charged.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Mitchner
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.