Phillips v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1960
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently July 2019
3 federal appellate · 11 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 Campbell v. Commonwealth · Pepoon v. Commonwealth · Lucas v. Commonwealth · Jones v. Commonwealth · Oliver 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The rule in criminal cases is that the coincidence of circumstances tending to indicate guilt, however strong and numerous they may be, avails nothing unless the corpus delicti, the fact that the crime has been actually perpetrated, be first established. So long as the least doubt exists as to the act there can be no certainty as to the criminal agent.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“an extrajudicial confession of an accused that he committed the offense with which he is charged is not, alone and uncorroborated, adequate proof of the corpus delicti.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“it furnishe[d] no corroboration that the actual crime of sodomy for which [the defendant] was convicted was committed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Magruder 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.