Commonwealth v. Davis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 state decisions

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 1 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel at a trial to determine guilt is denied if the defendant’s attorney admits guilt. The conduct of counsel for the appellant constituted such an admission. “Defense counsel stipulated during trial that were the complainant present and sworn he would have testified that: at 4:00 p.m. on December 31, 1968, two men entered his milk truck, pointed a pistol at his head and demanded all of his money; after he complied, the thieves withdrew and he notified the police; and, at the preliminary hearing, he identified the appellant as one of the two robbers. The complete closing speech of appellant’s counsel was: ‘If Your Honor please, this man has been in jail for almost one year. This man has a narcotic problem.’ “The Commonwealth’s case hinged upon identification. Although one policeman testified that he saw a person running in the vicinity of the incident who fitted the general description later given by the complainant, it was the identification by the complainant himself which was the pivotal evidence in the case. Defense counsel gave up the opportunity to cross-examine and this was not part of a planned strategy based on availability of other witnesses to attack the identification. “Competency of counsel is not to be measured by 20-20 hindsight, but rather by the determination of whether ‘the particular course chosen by counsel had some reasonable basis designed to effectuate his client’s interests,’ Commonwealth ex rel. ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Davis