Underwood v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1936
Citation profile
12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently February 1960
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 Shepherd v. Commonwealth · Chappell v. Commonwealth · Moore v. Commonwealth · Moore v. Commonwealth · Postell 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.
“Gentlemen of the jury, it is a matter of common knowledge that a sentence to the penitentiary for life only means eight years; and if you give the defendant a life sentence, he will be back home in eight years and will be at the end of that time ready to shoot some other man.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Carroll““There are numerous cases which give recognition to the impropriety of such argument yet hold that it does not constitute such prejudicial error as will warrant a reversal.””
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.