Merritt v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1935
Citation profile
1 district · 62 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 65 later decisions — most recently May 2019 · most notably Johnson v. Commonwealth (1968), 310 Pa. Super. 39 - Commonwealth v. Griffin (1983)
1 district · 62 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 United States v. Cruikshank · Thacker v. Commonwealth · Cluverius v. Commonwealth · Moore v. State · Dixon 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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Even if the jury had believed that the accused pointed a loaded gun at Trull, they would not have been justified in finding him guilty of an attempted murder, unless they believed that at the time he pointed the pistol he had formed the purpose, the intent, to murder, and the act was done in furtherance of that specific intent.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“To commit murder, one need not intend to take life; but to be guilty of an attempt to murder, he must so intend. It is not sufficient that his act, had it proved fatal, would have been murder.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Lyerla“while a person may be guilty of murder though there was no actual intent to kill, he cannot be guilty of an attempt to commit murder unless he has a specific intent to kill”
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.