Painter v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1969
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 63 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 71 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2008 · most notably Beck v. Alabama (1980), Porter v. Com. (2008)
2 federal appellate · 63 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 Taylor v. Commonwealth · Belton v. Commonwealth · Bradshaw v. Commonwealth · Wooden v. Commonwealth · Plymale 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 71 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t] he jury is not required to accept, in toto, either the theory of the Commonwealth or that of an accused. They have the right to reject that part of the evidence believed by them to be untrue and to accept that found by them to be true. In so doing, they have broad discretion in applying the law to the facts and in fixing the degree of guilt, if any, of a person charged with a crime.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“so clear and uncontroverted that a trial court could properly refuse to instruct on the lesser included offenses.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Every malicious killing is murder either in the first or second degree — the former if deliberate and premeditated, and the latter if not. Furthermore, there is a prima facie presumption of malice arising from the mere fact of a homicide, but there is no presumption therefrom of deliberation and premeditation. This is merely another way of stating the familiar rule of law that every homicide is prima facie murder in the second degree, and that the burden is on the accused to reduce, and on the Commonwealth to elevate, the grade of the offense.”
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.