McWilliams v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““As said by this court in Collins v. City of Radford, 134 Va. 518 , 113 S. E. 735 , 737: Trials on appeal to the circuit court are required ‘to be conducted without formal pleadings (Code, section 4990); and the fullest provision is made for all amendments of the original warrant “in any respect in which it appears to be defective. ’ ’ (Code, section 4989.) Under the broad terms of the section last cited, if there had been, as there clearly was not, any substantial reason to suppose that the accused did not know from the warrant what he was charged with, the court could even have gone to the extent of discarding entirely the original warrant, issuing a new one for the offense, and proceeding to trial on that. The provisions of the statute are intended to give the court a free hand in conducting the trial on appeal in such way as to guarantee to the accused every substantial right, on the one hand, and, on the other, to cut off frivolous and purely formal objections.’ ” See Harley v. Commonwealth, 131 Va. 664 , 108 S. E. 648 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Malouf v. City of Roanoke