Commonwealth v. Pike’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 8 district · 111 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 125 later decisions — most recently August 2022 · most notably Fortini v. Murphy (2001), State v. Warren (2008)
3 federal appellate · 8 district · 111 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 Shapiro v. Thompson · City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey · Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City · Gregory v. United States · Dwyer v. Globe Newspaper Co.
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 125 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Where nondeadly force is used, a defendant is entitled to a self-defense instruction if the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the defendant * without regard to credibility, supports a reasonable doubt that (1) the defendant had reasonable concern for his personal safety; (2) he used all reasonable means to avoid physical combat; and (3) 'the degree of force used was reasonable in the circumstances, with proportionality being the touchstone for assessing reasonableness.' "”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“[W]hether a defendant used all reasonable means of escape before acting in self-defense is a factual question dependent on a variety of circumstances.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“A self-defense instruction is not required unless there is some evidence that the defendant availed himself of all means, proper and reasonable under the circumstances, of retreating from the conflict before resorting to the use of deadly [or nondeadly] force.”
2 later decisions 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.