Commonwealth v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1890
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2003 · most notably Krulewitch v. United States (1949), Attorney General v. Pelletier (1922)
2 federal appellate · 26 state decisions — followed in 11 states
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. Walker · Commonwealth v. Waterman · Commonwealth v. Hayden
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The evidence of the conversation of Arthur B. Kendall after the fire, although not in the presence of the Smiths, was admissible. There was evidence tending to' show a conspiracy between the Kendalls and the Smiths to burn the house for the purpose of obtaining insurance upon property claimed to be therein. The conversation related to the course to be pursued by Arthur in consequence of certain evidence developed at the fire inquest, and in this Arthur expressed a wish to remove the goods from Griflin’s, where they had been previously stored by C. It. Kendall and the defendant George T. Smith, and was informed by C. R. Kendall of Morill’s place. * * * The evidence of Arthur R. Kendall’s conversation could not be given in evidence without necessarily including that of his brother, and was connected with acts done immediately thereafter by himself and the defendant Smith in reference to the disposition of the trunks, etc. Even if those declarations or conversations were subsequent to the burning, they were still made during the pendency of the criminal enterprise. They were not recitals of past occurrences, but were connected with acts done, evidently, to shield the conspirators from the consequences of.their crime.””
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.