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← 400 Mass. 427 - Commonwealth v. Willie

Commonwealth v. Willie’s Empirical Analysis

1987

Citation profile

87
cited by 87 later decisions
3
states following
October 2018
most recently cited

2 federal appellate · 4 district · 78 state decisions

How this case has been cited

Cited by 87 later decisions — most recently October 2018 · most notably 117 Wash. 2d 829 - State v. Lord (1992), Commonwealth v. Freiberg (1989)

2 federal appellate · 4 district · 78 state decisions

3501987199020002010decided

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 v. Agurs · United States v. Augenblick · Campbell v. United States · United States v. Carlton E. Bryant, United States of America v. William E. Turner · United States v. Arra

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 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

  1. “when potentially exculpatory evidence is lost or destroyed, a balancing test is employed . . . . The courts must weigh the culpability of the Commonwealth, the materiality of the evidence and the potential prejudice to the defendant.”
    4 later decisions quote this exact passage
  2. “[This] test does not require the Commonwealth to prove good faith or earnest efforts to preserve the evidence. The Commonwealth’s conduct is merely a factor to be weighed in determining its culpability. That culpability, if any, is then weighed along with the other two factors, materiality and prejudice, in determining whether, and to what extent, any remedy will be employed.”
    1 later decision quote this exact passage
  3. “a reasonable possibility, based on concrete evidence,”
    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.