Perkins v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently October 1997
4 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 Bradshaw v. Commonwealth · Bryan v. Commonwealth · Jacobs 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The test of murder is malice. Every malicious killing is murder either in the first or second degree — the former if deliberate and premeditated, and the latter if not. Furthermore, there is a prima facie presumption of malice arising from the mere act of homicide, but there is no presumption therefrom of deliberation and premeditation. That is merely another way of stating the familiar rule of law that every homicide is prima facie murder in the second degree, and that the burden is on the accused to reduce, and on the commonwealth to elevate, the grade of the offense. . . . ””
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.