446 Pa. Super. 261 - Commonwealth v. McMaster’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently December 2019 · most notably Commonwealth v. Delbridge (2003), Hutchison Ex Rel. Hutchison v. Luddy (2000)
34 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 Strickland v. Washington · Jenkins v. Anderson · Connecticut Performing Arts Foundation, Inc. v. Brown · Commonwealth v. Twiggs · Commonwealth v. Durst
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) such capacity to communicate, including as it does both an ability to understand questions and frame and express intelligent answers, (2) mental capacity to observe the occurrence itself and the capacity of remembering what it is that she is called to testify about, and (3) a consciousness of the duty to speak the truth.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“[C]ompetency of a witness is presumed and the burden falls upon the objecting party to demonstrate incompetency. When the witness is under fourteen years of age, there must be a searching judicial inquiry as to mental capacity, but discretion nonetheless rests in the trial judge to make the ultimate decision as to competency.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he determination of competency is a matter for the sound discretion of the trial court, which will not be disturbed absent a clear abuse of that discretion.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Com. v. RPS · Com. v. DJA
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.