Willis v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently July 2005
22 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 Vance v. Commonwealth · Legions v. Commonwealth · Young v. Commonwealth · Broaddus v. Commonwealth · Addington 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“You may find the defendant guilty on the testimony of (name of person) alone if it is credible and you believe it beyond a reasonable doubt. But if her testimony is incredible, or so contrary to human experience or to usual human behavior as to make it unworthy of belief, it is not sufficient to support a finding of guilty. If considering whether or not her testimony is credible, you may consider an unreasonable delay, if any, in reporting the alleged offense.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The failure to report an alleged rape by force and violence for an unreasonable period after the incident occurred casts suspicion and doubt on the truthfulness of the story of a prosecutrix unless there is a credible explanation given for such a delay.”
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.