Kirkpatrick v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1970
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 297 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 302 later decisions — most recently March 2016 · most notably Spencer v. Commonwealth (1990), Stockton v. Commonwealth (1984)
3 federal appellate · 297 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 Chimel v. California · United States v. Rabinowitz · Harris v. United States · Williams v. United States · United States v. Bennett
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 302 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) to prove motive to commit the crime charged; (2) to establish guilty knowledge or to negate good faith; (3) to negate the possibility of mistake or accident; (4) to show the conduct and feeling of the accused toward his victim, or to establish their prior relations; (5) to prove opportunity; (6) to prove identity of the accused as the one who committed the crime where the prior criminal acts are so distinctive as to indicate a modus operandi; or (7) to demonstrate a common scheme or plan where the other crime or crimes constitute a part of a general scheme of which the crime charged is a part.”
45 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“so intimately connected and blended with the main facts adduced in evidence, that they cannot be departed from with propriety.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“`such necessary conne[ct]ion with the transaction then before the court as to be inseparable from it'”
2 later decisions 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.