10 Mass. App. Ct. 190 - Commonwealth v. Davis’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 4 district · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 46 later decisions — most recently November 2018 · most notably Commonwealth v. Mattei (2010), 16 Mass. App. Ct. 271 - Commonwealth v. Welch (1983)
5 federal appellate · 4 district · 37 state decisions
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 Kelly v. United States · Commonwealth v. Appleby · Commonwealth v. St. Pierre · Commonwealth v. Gould · Commonwealth v. Chalifoux
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 46 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“assaults ... [any correctional officer],” while subsection (b), the other statute of conviction, increases the maximum sentence to ten years for an assault in which the defendant "uses a deadly or dangerous weapon.” 2 . In Davis, the court advanced four reasons for rejecting the State’s argument that teeth should be considered "dangerous weapons” under the assault statute: (1) No reported decision in Massachusetts had ever held that "human hands, feet or teeth alone can constitute a dangerous weapon.” The court stated that this consideration "call[ed] ... for the exercise of judicial restraint in expanding the concept [of dangerous weapons] beyond its traditiorial scope.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““any of the following which in the manner it is used or intended to be used is capable of producing death or serious bodily injury: “(I) A firearm, whether loaded or unloaded; “(II) A knife; “(III) A bludgeon; or “(IV) Any other weapon, device, instrument, material, or substance, whether animate or inanimate.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Ross“direct or inferential proof that the assault was intentional, unjustified, and made with the reasonable appreciation ... that a disabling or disfiguring injury would result.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.