Commonwealth v. Moyer’s Empirical Analysis
1947
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 85 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 95 later decisions — most recently March 2001 · most notably Commonwealth v. Redline (1958), Commonwealth v. Bolish (1955)
6 federal appellate · 85 state decisions — followed in 11 states
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 Insurance Company v. Boon · Spies v. People · Lake v. Atlantic Works · Commonwealth v. Drum · Commonwealth v. Malone
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 95 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * * For any individual forcibly to defend himself or his family or his property from criminal aggression is a primal human instinct. It is the right and duty of both individuals and nations to meet criminal aggression with effective countermeasures. Every robber or burglar knows when he attempts to commit his crime that he is inviting dangerous resistance. * * * ””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“Murder of the first and second degree. All murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration of, or attempting to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery, burglary, or kidnapping, shall be murder in the first degree. All other kinds of murder shall be murder in the second degree. The jury before whom any person indicted for murder shall be tried, shall, if they find such person guilty thereof, ascertain in their verdict whether the person is guilty of murder of the first or second degree. * * * "Whoever is convicted of the crime of murder of the first degree is guilty of a felony and shall be sentenced to suffer death in the manner provided by law, or to undergo imprisonment for life, at the discretion of the jury trying the case, which shall fix the penalty by its verdict. The court shall impose the sentence so fixed, as in other cases. * * *”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““Under ‘proximate cause theory’ when a felon sets in motion a chain of events which were or should have been within his contemplation when motion was initiated, felon and those acting in concert with him, should be held responsible for any death which by direct and almost inevitable consequences results from the initial criminal act.””
2 later decisions 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.