Commonwealth v. Genius’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently December 2018
6 federal appellate · 2 district · 12 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 Commonwealth v. Grace · Commonwealth v. Gould · Commonwealth v. Brown · Commonwealth v. Little · Commonwealth v. Sharpe
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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The motion judge reviewed both of the defendant’s allegations and concluded that they were groundless. The judge, nonetheless, granted the defendant a new trial. After examining the judge’s memorandum in which he allowed the defendant’s motion, we conclude that the judge granted the new trial on the basis of Dr. Weiss’s reports that the defendant was not criminally responsible on the date of the offense. While the judge did not make an explicit finding to this effect, it appears that he viewed the psychiatric reports as newly discovered evidence. While it is true that the granting of a new trial is within the discretion of the judge, ... that discretion is not boundless and absolute____ Here, the judge addressed and rejected both of the grounds proffered by the defendant in support of his motion. The judge then allowed a new trial without questioning, or making necessary findings, whether the information contained within the psychiatric report was unknown to the defendant or to his counsel at trial and not reasonably discoverable, ... and whether the information was of such relevance and materiality that it created a substantial risk that the jury would have reached a different conclusion if the evidence had been admitted at trial____”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Genius v. Pepe“To conclude, we are presented with a situation where the judge expressly excluded the two grounds offered by the defendant in support of his motion, and improperly applied a third not advanced by the defendant in allowing a new trial. While a judge has substantial latitude in determining whether to order a new trial, he must do so on some identifiable ground. We therefore conclude that, in the circumstances of this case, the judge erred and we thereby vacate the judge’s order granting the defendant’s motion for a new trial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Genius v. Pepe
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.