Commonwealth v. Markvart’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

50 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 50 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"Juvenile and adult court probation records, psychiatric and psychological records and reports of the person named in the petition, including the report of any qualified examiner, as defined in section 1, and filed under this chapter, police reports relating to such person's prior sexual offenses, incident reports arising out of such person's incarceration or custody, oral or written statements prepared for and to be offered at the trial by the victims of the person who is the subject of the petition and any other evidence tending to show that such person is or is not a sexually dangerous person shall be admissible at the trial if such written information has been provided to opposing counsel reasonably in advance of trial."”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Given · Commonwealth v. Given

2. ““Recitation of facts in that report that, although admissible, turn out not to be admitted during trial (or elicited on cross-examination of the expert) would undermine the balance we struck in Department of Youth Servs. v. A Juvenile, [ 398 Mass. 516, 531 (1986)]. In context, the qualified examiner’s report is the equivalent of the direct examination of the expert, and the report as submitted to the jury should therefore be subject to the same constraints. Consistent with the principles articulated in Department of Youth Servs. v. A Juvenile, supra and Commonwealth v. Jaime, [ 433 Mass. 575, 577-578 (2001)], the qualified examiner’s report must be redacted prior to its submission to the jury to exclude any facts or data that were not presented in evidence or elicited during the cross-examination of the qualified examiner. In short, an expert’s direct examination is not a vehicle for the introduction of facts in evidence (other than those that the expert directly observed), and the qualified examiner’s report should not be transformed into such a vehicle.” Id. at 338-339.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Given

3. “The fact that a prior charge was nol prossed does not mean that the underlying information on which the charge was predicated has become inherently inadmissible. For example, the complaining witness in the nol prossed case would still be allowed to testify, as would any of the other witnesses who could have testified if that case had gone to trial.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 94 Mass. App. Ct. 477 - Commonwealth v. Bradshaw