25 Va. App. 81 - Mitchell v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently March 2016
12 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 7 Va. App. 10 - Blain v. Commonwealth · Faison v. Hudson · 19 Va. App. 24 - Woodard v. Commonwealth · 16 Va. App. 172 - Morrissey 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, in any prosecution for criminal sexual assault ... the fact that the person injured made complaint of the offense recently after commission of the offense is admissible, not as independent evidence of the offense, but for the purpose of corroborating the testimony of the complaining witness.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The statute recognizes the probative value of the victim’s recent complaint of a sexual offense. It is unreasonable to expect the victim of such an offense, particularly a child, to express his report in succinct, technical terms. It is consistent with human experience that such a victim will lodge his complaint in the form of a description of the event, and in that description lies his complaint of the offense. The brother’s testimony described such a complaint. It exceeded in no significant way a report of the offense. The details of the victim’s complaint were elements of the offense. Without those details, the complaint would have been incomplete. Thus, the brother’s testimony was properly admitted into evidence as a report of the victim’s recent complaint of a sexual assault.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“when the opposing party: (1) suggests that the declarant had a motive to falsify his testimony and the consistent statement was made prior to the existence of that motive, (2) alleges that the declarant, due to his relationship to the matter or to an involved party, had a design to misrepresent his testimony and the prior consistent statement was made before the existence of that relationship, (3) alleges that the declarant’s testimony is a fabrication of recent date and the prior consistent statement was made at a time when its ultimate effect could not have been foreseen, or (4) impeaches the declarant with a prior inconsistent statement.”
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.