Commonwealth v. Butler’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently December 2009 · most notably 405 Pa. Super. 392 - Cohen v. Albert Einstein Medical Center (1991), 233 Pa. Super. 396 - Commonwealth v. Donnelly (1975)
5 federal appellate · 23 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 Chapman v. State of California · United States v. Marion · Harrington v. California · Strunk v. United States · Dilliplaine v. Lehigh Valley Trust Co.
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he crucial determination that a trial judge must make in ruling on the admissibility of evidence of a witness’s mental instability is whether it is related to the subject of the litigation or whether it affects the testimonial ability of the witness so as to impeach him. The evidence can be said to affect the credibility of a witness when it shows that his mental disorganization in some way impaired his capacity to observe the event at the time of its occurrence, to communicate his observations accurately and truthfully at trial, or to maintain a clear recollection in the meantime. See Commonwealth v. Repyneck, 181 Pa.Super. 630 , 124 A.2d 693 , allocatur refused, 181 Pa.Super. xxiv (1956).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[M]ere mental derangement on some matter not connected with the subject of the litigation and not affecting the testimonial ability of the witness is not even to be considered by the jury in determining the credibility of the witness.”
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.