Elam v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently August 2012 · most notably Johnson v. Commonwealth (2000), Thomas v. Commonwealth (1992)
27 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 Tuggle v. Commonwealth · Calhoun v. Commonwealth · Petcosky v. Bowman
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To a lay person, rape is generally construed to mean total consummation of an act of sexual intercourse, committed forcibly and with complete penetration. But . . . proof of penetration, however slight the entry may be, is sufficient .... Given the circumstantial evidence of penetration adduced by the Commonwealth in this case, the jury could rationally discount the uncertainty reflected in the prosecutrix’s testimony as the product of lay ignorance of these legal principles.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Penetration by a penis of a vagina is an essential element of the crime of rape; proof of penetration, however slight the entry may be, is sufficient; evidence of ejaculation is not required; and no hypothesis that penetration was accomplished by some other object other than a penis is sufficient to reverse a conviction unless it reasonably flows from the evidence itself rather than the imagination of counsel.”
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.