Commonwealth v. Helfant’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
230 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 235 later decisions — most recently January 2023 · most notably Commonwealth v. Wilson (1998), Commonwealth v. Gunter (1998)
230 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 Bruton v. United States · Commonwealth v. King · Commonwealth v. Gallison · Commonwealth v. Chase · Commonwealth v. Welcome
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 235 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is well settled that the prosecution may not introduce evidence that a defendant previously has misbehaved, indictably or not, for the purposes of showing his bad character or propensity to commit the crime charged, but such evidence may be admissible if relevant for some other purpose.”
4 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.