Lucas v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1946
Citation profile
14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently April 1998
14 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 Fugate v. Commonwealth · Fox v. Commonwealth · Burden v. Commonwealth · Jordan v. Commonwealth · Logan 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In the case before us, it is obvious that the Commonwealth deliberately held the witness back in order to get an advantage. The evidence introduced in rebuttal was purely substantive in nature, and should have been introduced in chief. It was the most damaging evidence offered by the Commonwealth, and its introduction during the final stages of the trial was, under the circumstances, prejudicial to appellant’s rights.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Wright v. State““The parties may then respectively offer rebutting evidence only, unless the court, for good reason in furtherance of justice, permit them to offer evidence upon their original case.””
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.