Sutton v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1925
Citation profile
11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently June 1949
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 Dials v. Commonwealth · Bowlin v. Commonwealth · Commonwealth v. McClanahan · Garrison v. Commonwealth · Dorsey 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We do not agree with counsel for the commonwealth, that in order to render incompetent evidence of a confession made by a defendant of his guilt of a crime with which he stands charged, the confession must have been extorted from him by violence. While the word ‘extorting’ may, by implication, be given a meaning that would include a result attained by violence, we think the word, as employed in the statute, supra, is used in the sense of ‘compelling’ or ‘coercing’ from the person charged with crime the confession or information intended to be used as evidence of his guilt, which may be accomplished by any means that would serve to overcome his power of resistance, or make the confession or admission other than a voluntary one. ’ ’”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““That what is commonly known as ‘sweating’ is hereby defined to be the questioning of a person in custody charged with crime in an attempt to obtain information from him concerning his connection with crime or knowledge thereof, after he has been arrested and in custody, as stated, by plying him with questions or by threats or other wrongful means, extorting from him information to be used against him as testimony upon his trial for such alleged crime.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Webb v. Commonwealth““There is no evidence whatever conducing to prove that there was any persuasion, compulsion or extortion, either by the ‘plying’ of questions, threats, offer of immunity from prosecution, promises of reward, or other wrongful means, employed by the officers or others to obtain the confessions.””
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.