Commonwealth v. Melton’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate · 4 district · 40 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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “the defendant 'intended to commit a battery, took some overt step toward accomplishing that intended battery, and came reasonably close to doing so.’ ” Porro, 939 N.E.2d at 1163 (quoting Commonwealth v. Melton, 436 Mass. 291 , 763 N.E.2d 1092 , 1096 (2002)). Under the threatened-battery theory, the government must prove that”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. United States v. Whindleton · 94 Mass. App. Ct. 550 - Commonwealth v. Oswaldo O., a juvenile

2. “We recognize that, in most of the cases cited above, the unintended victims were actually struck, injured, or killed by the defendant. That fact, however, has nothing to do with intent or with transferred intent. It merely affects whether the crime is one of assault and battery or only assault. . . . . . . . Beyond the metaphysics of transferred intent, we note that treating the defendant's actions as four assaults by means of a dangerous weapon is consistent with the purposes underlying the common law of assault. An attempted but unsuccessful battery is criminal not because it actually harms the victim — indeed, the victim can be completely unaware of the attempt — but rather because it imperils the victim. The conduct here (a shot into a car full of people, fired at point blank range from a passing vehicle traveling at high speed) placed four people in equally grave peril. Limiting the number of convictions to the precise number of victims the defendant intended to hit ignores the additional persons whose lives were placed at risk by the defendant's attempt to batter his intended victim. The suggestion that they were not victims of any crime, when they all suffered the very peril that the crime of assault by means of a dangerous weapon is intended to address, is contrary to common sense. . . . . Rather, a person is a victim of assault if he is at risk of battery from the defendant's attempted battery on anyone, just as the person would be a victim of assault if he were plac”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Elmi · State v. Elmi

3. “that the defendant intentionally engaged in menacing conduct that reasonably caused the victim to fear an imminent battery,”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 94 Mass. App. Ct. 550 - Commonwealth v. Oswaldo O., a juvenile · 93 Mass. App. Ct. 1109 - Commonwealth v. Rhodes