Commonwealth v. Winter’s Empirical Analysis
1927
Citation profile
74 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 76 later decisions — most recently January 2007 · most notably Commonwealth v. Libonati (1943), Commonwealth v. Simmons (1948)
74 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 Wilson v. United States · Commonwealth v. Colandro · Shaffner v. Commonwealth · Commonwealth v. Cavalier · Commonwealth v. Weiss
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 76 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The courts are bound to recognize, particularly in crimes relating to matters of sex ... that the mental state of the accused is an important factor; anything which throws light upon his state of mind just previous to the commission of the offense with which he is charged strongly illuminates his place in the picture of the crime and gives better opportunity to estimate the likelihood of his connection with it.... "Our conclusion is that the evidence of defendant's solicitation of the two other children to commit an unnatural crime was properly received as showing his state of mind on the day in question shortly before the commission of the crime with which he was charged, and the motive which governed him in seeking to have the two deceased children accompany him, and in their subsequent murders.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““We find on examining the record that they were used by the doctor who performed the autopsies on the children to explain the location and severity of the wounds.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Weston
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.