Parsons v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1924
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently October 2012 · most notably 5 Va. App. 188 - Evans-Smith v. Commonwealth (1987), Breeden v. Commonwealth (1976)
1 federal appellate · 30 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 Commonwealth v. Trefethen · Commonwealth v. Colandro · Commonwealth v. Principatti · Commonwealth v. Abbott · Rust v. Reid
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We cannot agree with the learned trial judge, either that the remarks were not improper, or that he should not have directed the jury to disregard them. Whatever liberties are permitted to counsel for persons who are guilty of crime, to appeal for mercy for their clients (though there is no evidence of any such appeal in this record), and to refer to those near and dear to them who will vicariously suffer under such circumstances, the prosecutor has no corresponding liberty. The Commonwealth does not rely either upon prejudice or sympathy for the enforcement of its laws. That every normal human being does sympathize with the widow and children of the deceased is true, but this fact in no way assists in determining either the guilt or the innocence of the accused, and the attention of the jury charged with passing thereon should not be thus distracted. The court should have corrected this inadvertence of the assistant prosecutor. Facts which cannot be proved because irrelevant can afford no proper basis for argument. 30 C.J. 177, section 400.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.