Commonwealth v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis
1943
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions — most recently April 2014 · most notably Williams v. People of State of New York (1949), Commonwealth v. Baker (1992)
2 federal appellate · 40 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 Ex parte Lange · Commonwealth v. Williams · Commonwealth v. Parker · Commonwealth. v. Garramone · Commonwealth v. Petrillo
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The record also discloses that before this formal adjudication the court received a large amount of information about the defendant’s criminal record. Some of this was of a documentary character and some of it was oral. In the remarks made by Judge Sloane before he imposed sentence he said, inter alia, ‘We talked with Warden Smith, of the Penitentiary, Dr. Baldi, of the County Prison, and the parole office of the Penitentiary. No one has a good word for him — he is troublesome and dangerous. We got and examined the penitentiary report of his misconduct in prison; it is not a good one. In 1934, this defendant hit another inmate with a smoking stand, and cut that inmate’s forehead; the guard found the latter inmate to blame.’ Several other statements of a similar tenor were made at the same time by Judge Sloane. The record is silent as to whether or not this information which the court received as to the defendant’s record entered into the court’s deliberations in fixing tbe degree of murder of which the defendant was guilty. A statement by Judge Alessandroni indicates affirmatively that in fixing the degree of the crime of which the defendant was guilty the court considered the defendant’s record. # * * “It is a prisoner’s constitutional right in this Commonwealth ‘to meet the witnesses face to face’ (Sec. 9, Declaration of Rights Const.P.S.). In Com. v. Corsino, 261 Pa. 593 at page 598, 104 A. 739, 740 , we held: ‘It is the inherent right of the prisoner in a capital case to”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Neal · People v. Giles“the record does not show affirmatively that no ex parte evidence was received by the court before it determined and declared the degree of the defendant's guilt of murder.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Giles“No one has a good word for him--he is troublesome and dangerous,”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Giles
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.