Mitchell v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1925
Citation profile
38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently December 2015 · most notably Webb v. Commonwealth (1963), 140 W. Va. 547 - State v. McGraw (1955)
38 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 Coffin v. United States · Pointer v. United States · Edgington v. United States · Coffin v. United States · Pine v. Commonwealth
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““... If the unnecessary word or words inserted in the indictment describe, limit or qualify the words which it was necessary to insert therein, then they are descriptive of the offense charged in the indictment and cannot be rejected as surplusage. The offense as charged must be proved.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Whether an unnecessary allegation may be rejected as surplusage or must be proved as laid is not always easy to determine. If the allegation is an independent clause, it may always be rejected; if it is an adjectival phrase, or, at any rate, if it is a single adjective, and describes or qualifies a necessary part of the indictment, it cannot be separated from the word it modifies.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Grant“It is elementary that what need not be proved need not be alleged, but sometimes . [the indictment] alleges something that it was not necessary to allege,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Powell v. Com.
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.