Lewis v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently September 2011 · most notably Fout v. Commonwealth (1957), Carpitcher v. Com. (2007)
33 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 Powell v. Commonwealth · Powell v. Commonwealth · Leigh 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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[wjhile discovery after trial, brought to the attention of the court in due time, that false testimony with respect to material facts has been given by a witness for the prosecution may constitute ground for a new trial, recantation by a State’s witness does not necessarily entitle the accused to a new trial. The opportunity and temptation for fraud are so obvious that courts look with suspicion upon such an asserted repudiation of the testimony of a witness for the prosecution, and this is so even though the repudiation be sworn to____ ... There must be clear and convincing proof that the witness testified falsely at the trial, and not merely proof that by reason of conflicting statements his testimony is unworthy of belief. Application for a new trial is addressed to the sound discretion of the trial court which has the opportunity of seeing and hearing the witness whose testimony is brought under attack, and the prime duty of determining whether he swore falsely at trial.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“while we know from [her] lips that this witness spoke falsely on one occasion, this does not establish that [her] testimony at the trial was false and the [later] statements . . . were true.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Carpitcher v. Com. · Turner v. Com.
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.