Commonwealth v. Dunn’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
4 district · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently February 2019 · most notably Commonwealth v. Peloquin (2002), Commonwealth v. Brown (2000)
4 district · 29 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 Solem v. Helm · Kolender v. Lawson · Harmelin v. Michigan · Weems v. United States · 8 Cal. 3d 410 - In Re Lynch
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[An offender] . . . shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life or for any term of not less than twenty years.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““The term ‘enters’ within the statute is given no special definition. Nonetheless, the word is to be construed as an unlawful entry, consistent with its use in a criminal context. See Black’s Law Dictionary 533 (6th ed. 1990) (‘In criminal law, entry is the unlawful making [of] one’s way into a dwelling or other house, for the purpose of committing a crime therein’). See also Commonwealth v. Ricardo, 26 Mass. App. Ct. 345, 355 (1988) (for purposes of armed assault within a dwelling, G. L. c. 265, § 18A, entry must be ‘unprivileged’ or unlawful). Indeed, the act’s very caption — ‘An Act Establishing the Crime of Home Invasion’ — bespeaks legislative intent that a consensual or privileged entry is not an ‘invasion.’ “Further, the word ‘enters’ appears in related statutory contexts, including G. L. c. 265, § 18A, and G. L. c. 266, §§ 14-19 (pertaining generally to burglary and to breaking and entering). As here, the word contemplates the common law meaning of an unlawful, or nonconsensual, entry.””
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.