Commonwealth v. Wrona’s Empirical Analysis
1971
Citation profile
143 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 143 later decisions — most recently December 2013 · most notably Commonwealth v. Riggins (1977), Commonwealth v. Martin (1976)
143 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 Commonwealth v. Bosurgi · Commonwealth v. Garrett · Commonwealth v. Johnston · Commonwealth v. Commander · Commonwealth v. Vivian
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 143 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) that the defendant did not reasonably believe it was immediately necessary to kill in order to protect himself against death or serious bodily harm, or that the defendant used more force than was necessary or reasonably appeared to him to be necessary to save himself from death, great bodily harm or the commission of a felony, (2) that the defendant provoked the use of force, or (3) that the defendant had a duty to retreat and that retreat was possible with complete safety.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“. . . in determining if the evidence was sufficient to sustain the conviction, the test is, whether accepting as true all of the evidence (be it direct or circumstantial) and all reasonable inferences arising therefrom, upon which the jury, or the trial court in a nonjury trial, could properly have reached its verdict, is it sufficient in law to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of the crime of which [s/]he has been convicted.”
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.