Whitaker v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1957
Citation profile
4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently November 1972
4 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 Reynolds v. Commonwealth · Monson v. Commonwealth · Edmonds v. Commonwealth · Noble v. Commonwealth · Smith 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The rule applicable to the instant case ‘is to the effect that where the instruction submitting the Commonwealth’s theory of the case is couched in such language the ordinary juror can easily understand, and its negative (raised by the usual reasonable doubt instruction) completely and adequately covers the defense of accused, it is not necessary to give an affirmative instruction embodying his theory.’” (p. 603.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Skinner
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.