Commonwealth v. Green’s Empirical Analysis
1959
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 106 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 115 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2022 · most notably Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer (1982), 67 Cal. 2d 365 - People v. Lara (1967)
3 federal appellate · 106 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 United States Ex Rel. Darcy v. Handy · Commonwealth v. Simmons · Commonwealth v. Buccieri · Commonwealth. v. Garramone · Commonwealth v. Cavalier
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 115 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... The imposition of the death penalty by a judicial tribunal should be made only when it is the sole penalty justified both by the criminal act and the criminal himself and then only after a full and exhaustive inquiry into both the criminal act and the criminal himself. Time and again in referring to the duty of juries in fixing the penalty between death and life imprisonment we have insisted that the jury exercise its discretion only after it has considered all the evidence, culpatory and exculpatory, incriminating and extenuating, including what manner of man the criminal is and has been....”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“In Pennsylvania we have followed the common-law rule in measuring the capacity of a child to commit a crime. A child under the age of 7 years is conclusively presumed incapable of the commission of a crime; á child between the ages of 7 and 14 years is likewise presumed incapable of committing a crime but such presumption’is subject to refutation by evidence that the child does possess the criminal capacity; a child over the age of 14 years is prima facie capable of the commission of a Crime.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“by the law . . . ever since the time of Edward the Third, the capacity of doing ill, or contracting guilt, is not so much measured by years and days, as by the strength of the delinquent's understanding and judgment.”
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.