Spear v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently September 2012
14 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 Skipper v. Commonwealth · Campbell v. Commonwealth · Hale 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"We have repeatedly said that a judge, in the trial of a case before a jury, should abstain from expressing or indicating by word, deed or otherwise his personal views upon the weight or quality of the evidence. Expressions of opinion, or remarks, or comments upon the evidence which have a tendency to indicate bias on the part of the trial judge, especially in criminal cases, are regarded as an invasion of the province of the jury and prejudicial to an accused. [Citations omitted.]" Spear v. Commonwealth, 213 Va. 599 , 194 S.E.2d 751, 753 (Va.1973).”
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.