2 Va. App. 170 - Beck v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
32 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently November 2016 · most notably State v. Scott (2001), 19 Va. App. 437 - Logan v. Commonwealth (1994)
32 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 Bottoson v. Florida · Stamper v. Commonwealth · Dufour v. Mississippi · Stockton v. Commonwealth · Norfolk & Western Railway Co. v. Liepelt
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[I]f the proof relied upon by the Commonwealth is wholly circumstantial . . . then to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt all necessary circumstances proved must be consistent with guilt and inconsistent with innocence. They must overcome the presumption of innocence and exclude all reasonable conclusions inconsistent with that of guilt. To accomplish that, the chain of necessary circumstances must be unbroken and the evidence as a whole must satisfy the guarded judgment that both the corpus delicti and the criminal agency of the accused have been proved to the exclusion of any other rational hypothesis and to a moral certainty. Yet what inferences are to be drawn from proved facts is within the province of the jury and not the court so long as the inferences are reasonable and justified.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The judgment of a trial court sitting without a jury is entitled to the same weight as a jury verdict, and will not be disturbed on appeal unless plainly wrong or without evidence to support it.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.