McReynolds v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1941
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 27 later decisions — most recently October 1999 · most notably Bennett v. Angelone (1996), Harper v. Commonwealth (1955)
2 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 White v. Barnes · Parsons v. Commonwealth · McCann v. Commonwealth · Dingus v. Commonwealth · Mercer 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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is not enough for the accused to say that he was terrified. There is no way by which we can gauge his state of mind. Moreover, one whose nerves were unstrung might have been frightened by facts which would not have troubled an ordinary [person] at all. It is for a jury to say whether they were reasonably sufficient to warrant an ordinary [person] in believing that he [or she] stood in danger of serious bodily harm.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“sitting in that humble home, seventy-eight years old, palsied, grieving about the boy that sleeps right up on the hill above the house”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Bennett v. Angelone
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.