Smith v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently March 2013
19 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 61 Cal. 2d 716 - People v. Woody · United States v. Green · Bunting v. Commonwealth · Lane v. Commonwealth · Hinton 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Evidence which has no tendency to prove guilt, but only serves to prejudice an accused, should be excluded on the ground of lack of relevancy. For evidence to be admissible it must relate and be confined to the matters in issue and tend to prove an offense or be pertinent thereto. Evidence of collateral facts or those incapable of affording any reasonable presumption or inference on matters in issue, because too remote or irrelevant, cannot be accepted in evidence.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“made people go as far as to tear their eyes right out of their sockets, chew off an arm, jump out of windows, do some really... bizarre things.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Lane v. Commonwealth“only served to inflame and excite the passions of the jury.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Lane v. Commonwealth
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.