Smith v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently July 2012
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 United States v. Brown · United States v. Coades · Whaley v. Commonwealth · 346 So. 2d 181 - State v. Williams · Robinson 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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“While the burden is on the Commonwealth to prove the identity of the object upon which the testimony of its expert is based, the practicalities of proof do not require the Commonwealth to negate all or to exclude every possibility of substitution, alteration or tampering. It need only establish that it is reasonably certain that substitution, alteration or tampering did not occur. All that is necessary to establish a chain of custody of exhibits is that the evidence afford reasonable assurance that the exhibits at trial are the same and in the same condition as they were when first obtained. (My emphasis). 219 Va. at 559 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“presumption of regularity in the handling of exhibits by public officials”
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.