26 Mass. App. Ct. 673 - Commonwealth v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently September 2010
9 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 Kotteakos v. United States · United States v. Bagaric · State v. Moynahan · United States v. Virgil D. Dardi, Robert B. Gravis, Charles Rosenthal and Charles Berman · 443 So. 2d 522 - State v. Sweeney
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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““As to defense witnesses, it is a far less persuasive proposition that if they are somehow in the toils of the law, they will, for that reason alone, be disposed to testify falsely against the government and in favor of the defendant. It is more likely that evidence of pending charges simply discredits, i.e., smears, the witness.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[i]n those cases in which courts have countenanced examination about prior arrests or pending charges to suggest bias on the part of the witness, there has generally been a link between the witness's entanglement with law enforcement and the main case on trial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Layher“grew out of the same episode which led to the charge for which the defendant is standing trial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Layher
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.