Upshur v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1938
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently June 2012
1 federal appellate · 18 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 Flick v. Commonwealth · Omohundro 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In Virginia, it is the function and duty of the trial judge in the first instance before admitting a confession, to determine from the evidence, in the absence of a jury, whether the confession has been freely and voluntarily made. In this decision of a question of fact he has a wide discretion .... “Thus the admissibility of a confession is a question for the court, and not for the jury. The court does not vouch for the confession, but admits it to the jury to be considered and weighed like other evidence. Its weight, its value and its sufficiency is a question for the jury.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“If the defendant made no confession, it is evident that neither fear nor favor moved him. If he did make the confession, it is equally clear that his testimony upon trial was false. The successive positions of the defendant are not only inconsistent with each other, but they are mutually contradictory. To sustain his subsequent contention, he asks us to disregard his evidence, and accept as true the evidence of the officers that a confession was made, but to refuse to accept their evidence that it was voluntarily made.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Lee v. State“Confessions are to be weighed like all other evidence and a jury may believe them in whole or in part, as reason may decide. If from the confession itself, or other evidence, it appears to a rational mind that a part is not true, a jury does not have to accept it.”
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.