Zirkle v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
96 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 101 later decisions — most recently March 2011 · most notably Coppola v. Commonwealth (1979), King v. Commonwealth (1977)
96 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 Michelson v. United States · Burford v. Commonwealth · Bell v. Commonwealth · Cain v. State · Allen 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 101 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The credibility of witnesses is a question exclusively for the jury, and where a number of witnesses testify directly opposite to each other, the jury is not bound to regard the weight of the evidence as equally balanced, they have the right to determine from the appearance of the witnesses on the stand, their manner of testifying, and their apparent candor and fairness, their apparent intelligence, or lack of intelligence, and from all the other surrounding circumstances appearing on the trial, which witnesses are more worthy of credit, and to give credit accordingly.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““We have held in numerous cases that the negligence required to be proven in a criminal proceeding must be more than the lack of ordinary care and caution. It must be something more than mere inadvertence or misadventure. As Mr. Justice Spratley said in Bell v. Commonwealth, 170 Va. 597, 611 , 195 S.E. 675 , ‘It (criminal negligence) is a recklessness or indifference incompatible with a proper regard for human life. It must be shown that a homicide was not improbable under all of the facts existing at the time, and that the knowledge of such facts should have had an influence on the conduct of the offender. 99 A.L.R. 829 ; 5 Am. Jur. 927 ; Cain v. State, 55 Ga.App. 376 , 190 S.E. 371 .’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The testimony of the Commonwealth was to the effect that the accused operated his vehicle in such a manner that it zigzagged across the center of the highway; that as it neared the scene of the accident it was being driven entirely on the wrong side of the road in the south-bound traffic lane in plain view of the automobile approaching from the opposite direction, and that the accused failed to turn into the north-bound traffic lane until too late to avoid a head-on collision. This evidence, if believed, ... was sufficient to convict [the accused] of negligence so gross and culpable as to indicate a careless disregard of human life and of the probable consequences of his act.”
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.