Commonwealth v. Pagan’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 32 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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “a defendant who has been convicted of possession of a large capacity feeding device, in violation of G. L. c. 269, § 10 ( m ), lawfully may be sentenced to State prison for not less than one year nor more than two and one-half years. The matter is remanded to the Superior Court for further proceedings consistent with this decision. So ordered . 1 Insofar as it is extremely unlikely that the Legislature meant an FID card to act as a”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Rodriguez

2. ““[A] repeat offender statute ‘concerns solely the sentence of a person convicted of a [current] violation . . . who has previously been convicted of [another enumerated violation]. The prior offense is not an element of the crime for which a defendant is charged but concerns the punishment to be imposed if he is convicted . . . and the prior offense is proved.’ ””

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

3. “When a statute does not define its words we give them their usual and accepted meanings, as long as these meanings are consistent with the statutory purpose. . . . We derive the words' usual and accepted meaning from sources presumably known to the statute's enactors, such as their use in other legal contexts and dictionary definitions.”

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