Clark v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently June 2019 · most notably Lane v. Commonwealth (1982), Powell v. Commonwealth (2004)
41 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 Bradley v. Commonwealth · Pike v. Eubank · Hundley v. Commonwealth · McLane v. Commonwealth · 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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is well settled in Virginia that a litigant’s right to impeach the credibility of adverse witnesses by showing their participation in criminal conduct has been confined to questions about a conviction for a felony, penury, and a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude. This limitation upon a defendant’s impeachment rights is a reasonably necessary measure to restrict the scope of a criminal trial.... [AJdmission of unadjudicated crimes for purposes of general impeachment of a witness would “lead to confusion in directing the jury’s attention to collateral matters and away from the issues in the case.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The rule is well settled in Virginia that a witness cannot be asked on cross-examination questions as to collateral independent facts irrelevant to the issue being tried, though bearing on the question of veracity, for the purpose of testing his credibility.”
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.