Forester v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1970
Citation profile
21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently September 2008
21 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 Pine v. Commonwealth · Livingston v. Commonwealth · Bailey v. Commonwealth · Puckett v. Commonwealth · Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company v. Tuttle
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In these circumstances, where no question of the validity of the indictment was raised before verdict, we hold that the defendant, while imperfectly charged, was sufficiently charged by the indictment with the offense and has waived his right to be more fully advised of ‘the cause and nature of his accusation.’ “Our views in this respect are further strengthened after a, review of the evidence and incidents of trial. It is obvious that the defendant, the Commonwealth and the court all were fully aware of the ‘cause and nature’ of the offense for which the defendant was being tried and of which he was convicted. Forester had a fair trial on the merits.” 210 Va. at p. 767 , 173 S. E. 2d at p. 854 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]o require persons charged with crime to assert their rights and to make their defenses before verdict, and thereafter to cut off all defenses not made before verdict unless prohibited by the Constitution. The Constitution gives to the accused the “right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation,” and this right cannot be taken away from him, but there is no inhibition on the legislature to fix a stage of the procedure beyond which he cannot go in the assertion of his constitutional right.”
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.