Lipinski 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. “The differentiation between murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree has been a traditional one in Maryland for literally hundreds of years. In law school we learned that the difference between first degree and second degree murder was the element of premeditation. That was the word, the term that was the key in understanding whether a murder was first degree or second degree. The question in this case is, is there evidence that this killing was willful, intentional and deliberate. And we can add the word premeditated, as that means willful and deliberate and with fully formed purpose before the killing.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lipinski v. State

2. ““I had been under a lot of pressure lately working long odd hours to support my family, looking for a new place to live after our landlord advised us the[y] were not going to renew our lease due to a family crisis. I just didn’t have enough time in each day to do everything I had to do. I was in just as much of a hurry to get out of there as she was. By this time I was tired from lack of sleep and worrying about where me and my family were going to live. With everything that was going on I was tired of it all her bitching at me to get done didn’t help.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lipinski v. State

3. “Most lay people think when you talk about premeditation, that one sat and thought and contemplated and decided and then went out and did an act based on that thought and decision. There have been a number of Maryland cases that say that there is premeditation that occurs in an instant, literally an instant. It’s whether the decision to kill has been made before the killing.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lipinski v. State