Commonwealth v. Clarke’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently February 2019 · most notably 76 Mass. App. Ct. 87 - Commonwealth v. Farnsworth (2010), Commonwealth v. Boria (2003)
28 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 Roviaro v. United States · Commonwealth v. Latimore · Commonwealth v. Saferian · Cleveland v. United States · Commonwealth v. Grace
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When contraband is found in a dwelling shared by a defendant and one or more other persons, a finder of fact may properly infer that the defendant is in possession of the contraband (not necessarily exclusive possession) from evidence that the contraband was found in proximity to the personal effects of the defendant in areas of the dwelling, such as a bedroom or closet, to which other evidence indicates the defendant has a particular relationship.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“the jury could reasonably have inferred that the defendant occupied the rear bedroom and was, indeed, in constructive possession of the contraband discovered therein.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“the items found in the front bedroom tended to show that someone other than the defendant occupied that room.”
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.