Commonwealth v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 124 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 138 later decisions — most recently January 1996 · most notably Commonwealth v. Clair (1974), Commonwealth v. Young (1974)
8 federal appellate · 124 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Escobedo v. Illinois · Johnson v. State of New Jersey · United States v. Atkinson · Lisenba v. People of State of California
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 138 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The majority now contrary to the whole course of modern trial procedure encourages defense counsel to sit by silently without calling errors to the trial court's attention until after the guilty verdict is returned. . . . Where counsel fails to call errors to the attention of the trial judge, the majority ignores that deficiency and assumes the function of protecting those failures by granting relief despite the silence of counsel at trial.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“. . . the burden is on the Commonwealth to establish his guilt in the commission of this crime. This is their burden. If you feel that their testimony does not substantially do that, based on the credibility of the witnesses, then you are not required to bring in a conviction. " This remark was also held to be "basic and fundamental”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“there is basic and fundamental error which affects the merits or justice of the case.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.