Commonwealth v. Rodriguez’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 6 district · 116 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 128 later decisions — most recently April 2019 · most notably 98 Wash. 2d 484 - State v. McCullum (1983), Commonwealth v. Harrington (1980)
3 federal appellate · 6 district · 116 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 In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Mullaney v. Wilbur · Cupp v. Naughten · Boyd v. United States · Maxwell v. Bishop
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 128 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“If a defendant raises a reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors whether he acted in self-defense, a reasonable doubt also necessarily arises as to whether the killing was unlawful. In such a case, acquittal is appropriate. Thus, in order to establish unlawfulness and thereby prove its case, the [state] must show the absence of self-defense (lawfulness) beyond a reasonable doubt.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Davis“we have long recognized that self-defense negates the element of 'unlawfulness.' " Commonwealth v. Rodriguez , 370 Mass. 684 , 688, 352 N.E.2d 203 (1976). See Commonwealth v. Webster , 5 Cush. 295 , 303 (1850) ("Homicide may be lawful or unlawful .... It may also be justifiable, and of course lawful, in necessary self-defence”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“we have long recognized that self-defense negates the element of 'unlawfulness.'”
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.