Thomas v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1945
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2018
16 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 Heilman v. Commonwealth · Watson v. Commonwealth · Merchant v. Commonwealth · Owsley 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he arbitrary age below which a child is incapable of committing crime is seven. Between the ages of seven and fourteen, a presumption of incapacity lies, which, however, may be overcome by evidence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. WDB v. Com.“[i]t seems to be rather well settled that no rule defines any particular age as conclusive of incapacity.”
1 later decision 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.