Commonwealth v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
53 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions — most recently April 2010 · most notably Commonwealth v. Riggins (1978), Commonwealth v. Cooley (1975)
53 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 Stovall v. Denno · Commonwealth v. Allen · James v. Valtierra · Commonwealth v. Whiting · Commonwealth v. Hawkins
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... before declarations of a deceased may be admitted as dying declarations, the evidence must, inter alia, justify the conclusion that at the time the statements were made, the declarant believed he was in fact dying, and also that death was imminent.”
4 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.