Castle v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1954
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently May 2003
20 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 Wright v. Commonwealth · Stapleton v. Commonwealth · Gravely v. Commonwealth · Jones v. Commonwealth · Myers 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[T]o raise the presumption of guilt from the possession of the fruits of [or] the instruments of crime by the [accused] it is necessary that they be found in his exclusive possession. A constructive possession, like constructive notice or knowledge, though sufficient to create a civil liability, is not sufficient to hold the [accused] to a criminal charge. He can only be required to account for the possession of things which he actually and knowingly possessed, as, for example, where they are found upon his person, or in his private apartment, or in a place of which he kept the key. If they are found upon premises owned or occupied as well by others as himself, or in a place to which others had equal facility and right of access, there seems no good reason why he, rather than they, should be charged upon this evidence alone.””
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.