Bennett v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

40 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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““In other days, when the punishment of crime was hampered far too much by legal refinements and abstruse learning, there would have been a place, perhaps, for the argument; but it can find no place now. Reason and justice have superseded these impractical and much abused rules of former days. These brothers, according to the testimony, both shot Lawson in the one encounter. The law will not stop, in such a case, to measure which wound is the more serious, and to speculate upon which actually caused the death. In many such cases the commonwealth would be helpless; for each defendant would go free because it could not be proven against him that his wound was the fatal one. Whether one actually inflicts the fatal wound, or contributes to or hastens the death in some minor way, he is guilty of the crime. And whether he hastens the death must be for the jury. ’ ’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Gross