Commonwealth v. Kloiber’s Empirical Analysis
1954
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 472 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 501 later decisions — most recently January 2024 · most notably Commonwealth v. Kravitz (1960), United States v. Barber (1971)
11 federal appellate · 472 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 Hopt v. People · Turner v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania · Commonwealth v. Libonati · Commonwealth v. Simmons · Commonwealth v. Lowry
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 501 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]here the witness is not in a position to clearly observe the assailant, or he is not positive as to identity, or his positive statements as to identity are weakened by qualification or by failure to identify defendant on one or more prior occasions, the accuracy of the identification is so doubtful that the Court should warn the jury that the testimony as to identity must be received with caution.”
34 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““We are of the opinion that the use of the words ‘moral certainty’ serves to confuse and befog the jury instead of enlightening and aiding them in determining whether the Commonwealth has convinced them of the guilt of the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt, and that in the future it would be wiser if the charge did not contain any reference to ‘moral certainty’.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The trial Judge because of his position and for other obvious reasons has been given a discretion to determine whether a number of bills of indictment should be consolidated and tried together, and his exercise of discretion in such matters will not be reversed by an appellate Court unless there has been a manifest abuse of discretion...””
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.