Commonwealth v. Starling’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 4 district · 49 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 56 later decisions — most recently December 2010 · most notably Commonwealth v. Bradshaw (1982), Commonwealth v. Grey (1987)
3 federal appellate · 4 district · 49 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 Mullaney v. Wilbur · Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Ass'n · United States v. Testan · Roberts v. Florida · Commonwealth v. Welansky
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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“‘If a man intentionally and without legal justification, excuse or extenuation uses upon the body of another a force, for example, a bullet from a revolver, and that as used would probably do grievous bodily harm to that other and will create a plain and strong likelihood that the other will die as a result, the act implies malice within the meaning of the law .... And our law says, when the killing is caused by the intentional use of a deadly weapon, there arises a presumption of malice aforethought.... Hence in this case, if you find that ... the Defendant ... took out a gun and fired it at [the victim] and killed him without justification or excuse or any extenuating circumstances to reduce it to manslaughter, then that is murder with malice aforethought, murder in the second degree.’”
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.