Foutch v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 1 district · 20 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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is true that sucli statements are to be found in many books; that if one be tbe ‘aggressor,’ or be ‘in fault,’ or ‘provoke a difficulty,’ he cannot; rely upon the plea of self-defense. But such general statements are only true when taken in the limited sense in which they must be understood, and with the qualifications with which judicial utterances that gave them existence have guarded their application. In order to make a man guilty of murder, who is the ‘aggressor,’ or ‘in fault,’ or who ‘provokes a difficulty’ in which his adversary is killed, he must have provoked it with the intent to kill his adversary or to do him great bodily harm, or to afford him a pretext for wreaking his malice upon his adversary. * * * In order to deny to such party the right to rely on the plea of self-defense, it must appear that he was the ‘aggressor,’ or ‘in fault,’ or ‘provoked the difficulty’ in such way and with such intent as the law contemplates In the use of these terms. It is not every ‘aggression’ which produces a difficulty that is an unlawful one, within the meaning of this phrase, nor is it every ‘fault’ which a man might commit that precludes him from defending himself when violently assaulted or menaced, nor is it every ‘provocation of a difficulty’ which robs him of the right of self-defense.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Huber v. United States