Smith v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 50 later decisions — most recently April 2014 · most notably Goins v. Commonwealth (1996), 14 Va. App. 836 - Branch v. Commonwealth (1992)
3 federal appellate · 44 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 Jackson v. Virginia · Burks v. United States · Greene v. Massey · Akers v. Commonwealth · Ward 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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“`it is necessary that the killing should have been done on purpose, and not by accident, or without design....'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“[B]ut the connection “may sufficiently appear from the circumstances, or subsequent declarations of the accused, and if the circumstances are such that the language used might reasonably be construed to include or refer to the deceased or injured person, the evidence should be admitted and the question left to the jury.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.