Commonwealth v. Hamilton’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 279 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 286 later decisions — most recently April 2020 · most notably Commonwealth v. Riggins (1977), Commonwealth v. Devers (1988)
3 federal appellate · 279 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
Applies 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Barker v. Wingo · United States v. Marion · Klopfer v. State of North Carolina · Cooper v. State of California · Smith v. Hooey
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 286 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“An alternative to a balancing test is a stated time period within which accused persons must be either brought to trial or released from any threat of prosecution. The theory behind this type of rule is that it eliminates the inherent vagueness encompassed in any balancing process and it avoids the necessity of a court determining a violation of this constitutional right on a case-by-case basis. It is also felt that a mandatory time requirement will act as a stimulant to those entrusted with the responsibility of managing court calendars.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage““. . .in order to more effectively protect the right of criminal defendants to a speedy trial and also to help eliminate the backlog in criminal cases in the courts of Pennsylvania we deem it expedient to formulate a rule of criminal procedure fixing a maximum time limit in which individuals accused of crime shall be brought to trial, in the future, in this Commonwealth.” (Emphasis added.)”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage““Barker represents the minimum standards guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. We also have the mandate of Article I, Section 9, of the Pennsylvania Constitution: ‘In all criminal prosecutions the accused hath a right to . . .a speedy public trial . . . ’, and our interpretations of this section need not be limited to the standards set forth to enforce the Federal guarantee. (Citations omitted). In Barker , the Supreme Court declined to establish a presumptive time period within which a state must try a defendant because it felt that such a rule ‘goes further than the Constitution requires’. 407 U.S. at 529 , 92 S.Ct. at 2191 , 33 L. Ed.2d at 116 . At the same time, however, the Court was careful to make it clear that, ‘[n]othing we have said should be interpreted as disapproving a presumptive rule adopted by a court in the exercise of its supervisory powers which establishes a fixed time period within which cases must normally be brought.””
3 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.