Commonwealth v. Light’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently September 2005
3 federal appellate · 15 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 Oregon v. Kennedy · Justices of Boston Municipal Court v. Lydon · Figueroa v. United States · Lassiter v. Department of Social Services · Commonwealth v. Cinelli
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“to discourage government agents from such deliberate and insidious attempts to subvert the defendant's right to a fair trial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“material, exculpatory evidence known to the police, which might well have ended the case with a finding of not guilty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Johnson v. Mahoney
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.