Chittum v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1970
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 36 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 46 later decisions — most recently February 2014 · most notably State v. Whistnant (1980), Essex v. Commonwealth (1984)
3 federal appellate · 36 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 Johnson v. Commonwealth · Granberry v. Commonwealth · Barrett v. Commonwealth · Howard v. Commonwealth · Roy 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 46 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Voluntary drunkenness, where it has not produced permanent insanity, is never an excuse for crime; except, where a party is charged with murder, if it appears that the accused was too drunk to be capable of deliberating and premeditating, then he can be convicted only of murder in the second degree. Gills v. Commonwealth, 141 Va. 445, 450 , 126 S.E. 51, 53 (1925).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“A person cannot voluntarily make himself so drunk as to become on that account irresponsible for his conduct during such drunkenness. He may be perfectly unconscious of what he does and yet be responsible.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Riley 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.