Commonwealth v. Festa’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
57 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently January 2019 · most notably Commonwealth v. McInerney (1977), Commonwealth v. Fitzgerald (1980)
57 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 Webb v. Texas · Commonwealth v. Freeman · Commonwealth v. Underwood · Commonwealth v. Kendrick · Commonwealth v. Hosey
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.
“The argument of the defendant that there was no evidence of malice or `ill will' on the part of the defendant toward the victim, and that this therefore precluded a verdict of guilty of murder in the second degree, betrays a basic misunderstanding of the meaning of `malice aforethought' employed with respect to the crime of murder in this Commonwealth. Malice aforethought does not necessarily require a showing of ill will toward the victim. Rather it comprehends any intent to inflict injury without legal justification or palliation.”
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.