Commonwealth v. Benjamin’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 2 district · 50 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently December 2014 · most notably Commonwealth v. Morrow (1973), Commonwealth v. Richards (1973)
5 federal appellate · 2 district · 50 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 Calder et Wife, v. Bull et Wife. · Commonwealth v. Geagan · Commonwealth v. White · Commonwealth v. Giacomazza · Commonwealth v. Stasiun
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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[wjhether the defendant be indicted as a principal under the 1968 statute or under the preexisting provisions ... the substance of the crime is the same____ The new statute merely calls the offender a principal instead of calling him an accessory____ That formerly, for some purposes, the crimes were separate was an artificial matter going chiefly to the form of the indictment.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““Whoever aids in the commission of a felony, or is an accessory thereto before the fact . . . shall be punished in the manner provided for the punishment of the principal felon.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Woodcock v. Amlaral
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.