Commonwealth v. Santos’s Empirical Analysis
2003
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 4 district · 52 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 66 later decisions — most recently October 2021 · most notably Commonwealth v. Zanetti (2009), Commonwealth v. Cohen (2010)
10 federal appellate · 4 district · 52 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 Schad v. Arizona · Commonwealth v. Delgado · State v. Famiglietti · Commonwealth v. Jones · Commonwealth v. Mamay
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 66 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'When a single count is charged and where the spatial and temporal separations between acts are short, that is, where the facts show a continuing course of conduct, rather than a succession of clearly detached incidents, a specific unanimity instruction is not required.' ... Thatch , 39 Mass. App. Ct. [at] 905 [ 653 N.E.2d 1121 ]... [judge not required to give specific unanimity instruction where rape was alleged to have occurred as part of single episode, despite victim's testimony as to multiple acts of penetration]. The same is true if the prosecution presents evidence of a single criminal scheme or plan carried out consistently over time. In the absence of some distinguishing differences between the successive events, there is no reason to fear that the jury will pick and choose among the alleged incidents and convict the defendant while disagreeing as to which of them were committed. See ... Sanchez , 423 Mass. [at] 599-600 [ 670 N.E.2d 377 ]... [where child victim described repeated identical pattern of sexual assaults, but did not describe particular incidents, specific unanimity instruction not required]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“There was no requirement that the jury agree as to precisely which threat, or which application of force, caused the victim to part with her money, and it would thus be pointless to require them to agree that it was one or more of the threats as opposed to one or more of the applications of force that succeeded in convincing [the victim] not to resist the taking. The jury need not be unanimous as to that detail ....”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“on a single charged offense, the prosecutor presents evidence of separate, discrete incidents, any one of which would suffice by itself to make out the crime charged.”
2 later decisions 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.