Commonwealth v. Sinnott’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 72 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 77 later decisions — most recently February 2019 · most notably Commonwealth v. Freiberg (1989), Commonwealth v. Judge (1995)
5 federal appellate · 72 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 In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Bruton v. United States · Delaware v. Van Arsdall · Irvin v. Dowd · Sandstrom v. Montana
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 77 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“that the murder was the natural and probable consequence of the commission of the crime, and ... that that crime, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, is a crime that involved inherent danger to human life, then the fact of the commission of that crime, with death resulting, allows you to find the presence of malice aforethought from those facts. So that under those circumstances, you would have at least a murder in the second-degree. (Emphasis added.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Sinnott v. Duval“If you have a death resulting under the circumstances I described by one who has committed a felony, an assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, then you have a murder in the second-degree.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Sinnott v. Duval“judges are not required to deliver their instructions in any particular form of words.”
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.