3 Va. App. 131 - Behrens v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently November 2010 · most notably 4 Va. App. 53 - Williams v. Commonwealth (1987), 15 Va. App. 1 - Brown v. Commonwealth (1992)
1 federal appellate · 39 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 United States v. Schocket · Inge v. Commonwealth · Drew v. Commonwealth · Powers v. Commonwealth · Clodfelter 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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To support a conviction based upon constructive possession, “the Commonwealth must point to evidence of acts, statements or conduct of the accused or other facts or circumstances which tend to show that the defendant was aware of both the presence and character of the substance and that it was subject to his dominion and control.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[W]here, as here, a conviction is based on circumstantial evidence, `all necessary circumstances proved must be consistent with guilt and inconsistent with innocence and exclude every reasonable hypothesis of innocence.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Suspicious circumstances, including proximity to a controlled drug, are insufficient to support a conviction.”
2 later decisions 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.