Commonwealth v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1953
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 43 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently August 2002 · most notably Commonwealth v. Kloiber (1954), Commonwealth v. Novak (1959)
3 federal appellate · 43 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 Haley v. Ohio · Watts v. Indiana · Turner v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania · Commonwealth v. Simmons · Commonwealth v. Spardute
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The plea of insanity at the time of committing the crime is a well recognized defense.... If the defendant has satisfied you by fairly preponderating evidence that he was insane at the time (deceased met his death), although the Commonwealth has convinced you that the defendant did the (killing), you would find him not guilty (by reason of insanity).”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Geschwendt v. Ryan“It first should be noted that only a general exception was taken to the charge and therefore the court can be reversed only for fundamental error therein.”
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.