Commonwealth v. Miles’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 4 district · 74 state decisions

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

1. “In deciding whether a defendant’s constitutional right to cross-examine and thus confront a witness against him has been denied because of an unreasonable limitation of cross-examination, a court must weigh the materiality of the witness’s direct testimony and the degree of the restriction on cross-examination. The determination can only be made on a case-by-case basis.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Brown v. Ruane · Commonwealth v. Gallett

2. “Here, the totality of the circumstances do not show by a preponderance of the evidence that Vergara’s identification of [Cavitt]’s photograph was the product of unnecessarily suggestive police procedures. As defense counsel acknowledged at the suppression hearing, nothing was said or done by the police to direct Vergara’s attention to the computer screen that was being viewed by [another witness]. Vergara simply looked around as he exited the detective bureau and observed [Cavity’s photograph on [the other witnesses screen. As defense counsel further acknowledged, there was no evidence that Vergara overheard [the other witness] making any comments with regard to [Cavity’s photograph, which could have tainted Vergara’s identification. Vergara’s identification of [Cavity’s photograph plainly did not occur in circumstances that were unnecessarily suggestive. Contrary to [Cavity’s assertion, Ver-gara’s observation of [Cavity’s photograph on the computer screen being viewed by [the other witness] was not a one-on-one showup identification. It was more akin to a display of a series of photographs, given that Vergara had been viewing thousands of photographs on his own computer screen just minutes before leaving the detective bureau. We have concluded that Vergara’s identification of [Cavity’s photograph was not the product of unnecessarily suggestive police procedures that were conducive to a mistaken identification. Accordingly, [Cavity’s motion to suppress photographic identifica”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 93 Mass. App. Ct. 1104 - Commonwealth v. Burgos · 57 F. Supp. 3d 81 - Cavitt v. Saba

3. “guarantee a criminal defendant's right to confront the witnesses against him through cross-examination.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Gallett · 92 Mass. App. Ct. 1124 - Commonwealth v. Dupree