Williams v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1941
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently December 1992
20 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 Allen v. Commonwealth · Shipp v. Commonwealth · Bradley v. Commonwealth · Kitchen v. Commonwealth · Browder 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[H]as been before this and other courts many times, and none of them has ever defined with precision any definite or settled course to be pursued by the court trying it. On the contrary, the most that has been determined is contained in a general statement that a trial court is vested with a sound discretion in determining the question upon the evidence and circumstances of each case, and that unless such discretion has been abused to the probable detriment of the accused the appellate court will not disturb the order of the trial court in disposing of the motion. But it will be perceived that such indefinite statement of the law— which we hereby approve as correct— erects no permanent or fixed standard to guide the court in passing upon such questions, but relegates their determination, and the course to be pursued, to the facts and circumstances of each case and to the sound judgment of the court as to whether or not such facts and circumstances reveal a situation of bias, prejudice or other adverse circumstances whereby there is considerable probability of the accused being unable to obtain a fair and impartial trial within the venue of the pending indictment. With the law in that condition it is an easy task to find cases decided by both this and other courts wherein the ruling of the trial court was upheld, and others wherein it was set aside, dependent upon the appellate court’s conclusion as to whether or not in the particular facts disclosed, a due regard for the cons”
4 later decisions 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.