Harmon v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
53 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 53 later decisions — most recently August 2011 · most notably Ricketts v. State (1981), Jackson v. State (1995)
53 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 Brown v. United States · Roy v. Commonwealth · Fleenor v. Commonwealth · Harris v. Commonwealth · Jones 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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Should the jury be permitted to know the name of the felony and the details thereof, it may mean more to them than the mere fact that the defendant is a person of doubtful veracity. The danger of such prejudice is increased if the Commonwealth is permitted to show the nature of the crime of which he has been previously convicted. Thus, so long as the defendant answers truthfully the inquiry as to a prior felony conviction, the name of the crime cannot be shown.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“obviously believed it would have less impact on the jury if he told them that he had once been convicted of a killing rather than having it brought out on cross-examination.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Lockhart v. Com.“A person convicted of a felony or perjury shall not be incompetent to testify, but the fact of conviction may be shown in evidence to affect his credit.”
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.