Belcher v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1933
Citation profile
29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently June 1969 · most notably Taylor v. Commonwealth (1937), Reed v. Commonwealth (1938)
29 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 Heck v. Commonwealth · Black v. Commonwealth · Russell v. City of Ashland · Mink v. Commonwealth · Brown 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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We have learned that alleged newly discovered testimony has become a handy and frequently resorted to route by which a convicted offender against the criminal laws seeks to avoid a verdict of a jury convicting him, and for that reason this and other courts have adopted the rule, not only that the alleged newly discovered evidence must be of such a nature and character as to clearly indicate that it might produce a different result at another trial wherein it could be heard by the jury," but also that the one seeking the benefit of it must make a convincing manifestation that he was deprived of it through no fault or dereliction of his own; and to that end he must make it appear that he made, or that there was made on his behalf, reasonably diligent efforts to discover the testimony before the trial but without avail, and which rule was promulgated and followed to escape impositions that might otherwise he imposed upon the court, as well as the injustice that might be visited upon the opposing litigant.””
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.