Commonwealth v. Collier’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently June 2024 · most notably Commonwealth v. Silva (2000), Commonwealth v. Russell (1999)
26 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 Webster v. United States · Commonwealth v. Gordon · Commonwealth v. Delaney · Commonwealth v. Keevan · Commonwealth v. Robicheau
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'[w]here the definition of a crime requires some forbidden act by the defendant, his bodily movement, to qualify as an act, must be voluntary. To some extent, then, all crimes of affirmative action require something in the way of a mental element -- at least an intention to make the bodily movement which constitutes the act which the crime requires.' ... In this case, the jury could have found that the defendant was aware of the protective order, but that the Commonwealth failed to prove that he intended that the car take a route that might violate the order. Where the evidence fairly raises an issue as to the defendant's intent either to direct, or acquiesce in, conduct of a third party, there must be proof that the defendant at least intended the act that resulted in the violation. Accordingly, in those comparatively rare situations where a third party is involved in the act that results in the violation, to obtain a conviction under G. L. c. 209A, § 7, the Commonwealth is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt an intentional act by the defendant which led to the violation of the c. 209A order.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew of the order.... Th[e] statute ... requires no more knowledge than that the defendant knew of the order. We decline to read any additional mens rea requirements into the statute.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[a] long-standing common law principle requires that, in the absence of specific words saying so, it is not supposed that the [L]egislature intended to make accidents and mistakes crimes”
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.