Napier v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1947
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently August 1973
15 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 Fletcher v. Commonwealth · Hagan v. Commonwealth · Noah v. Commonwealth · Watson v. Commonwealth · Hobbs 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A trial court, especially a regular circuit judge, wields a tremendous influence on the minds of jurors; and it is not unusual for a jury to conclude that `technical' rules of evidence tend to suppress `facts' which in their opinion should be introduced in evidence; and when the court instructs them upon an issue concerning which no evidence was introduced, jurors sometimes gather the impression that the court is attempting to point out the `true facts' in the unauthorized instruction. Oftentimes this results in the jury's `reading between the lines' of the evidence and arriving at an erroneous conclusion. Such being true, the court meticulously should follow the evidence in instructing the jury.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“absolutely no evidence connecting her husband with the homicide, ...”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“the giving of the instructions complained of was prejudicial error.”
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.