Commonwealth v. Howell’s Empirical Analysis
1940
Citation profile
38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently June 1978 · most notably Commonwealth v. Melton (1962), Commonwealth v. Green (1959)
38 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 Commonwealth v. Williams · Commonwealth. v. Garramone · Commonwealth v. Stabinsky · Commonwealth v. Hawk · Commonwealth v. Talarico
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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In cases of pleas of guilty, the court, where it determines the crime to be murder of the first degree, shall, at its discretion, [*] impose sentence of death or imprisonment for life.”
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.