Stevenson v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 60 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 67 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia (1980), Donahue v. Commonwealth (1983)
3 federal appellate · 60 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 Ross v. United States · United States v. Ross · Williams v. Morris
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 67 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“testimony in court, or written evidence, of a statement made out of court, the statement being offered as an assertion to show the truth of matters asserted therein, and thus resting for its value upon the credibility of the out-of-court asserter.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“`Hearsay' is a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Weller v. Com. · Burns v. Gagnon“Nonverbal conduct ... intended ... as an assertion and offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted falls within the ban on hearsay evidence.”
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.