Commonwealth v. Martin’s Empirical Analysis
1975
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 77 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 84 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2011 · most notably Batson v. Kentucky (1986), Commonwealth v. Farquharson (1976)
2 federal appellate · 77 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 Swain v. State of Alabama · Whitus v. State of Georgia Whitus · Commonwealth v. Clair · Pierre v. State of Louisiana · Commonwealth v. Goosby
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 84 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The presumption in any particular ease must be that the prosecutor is using the State’s challenges to obtain a fair and impartial jury to try the case before the court. The presumption is not overcome ... by allegations that in the case at hand all Negroes were removed from the jury or that they were removed because they were Negroes.” Commonwealth v. Martin, supra, 461 Pa. at 297 , 336 A.2d at 294 , quoting Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 222 , 85 S.Ct. 824 , 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965). (Emphasis in original).”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““. . . when the prosecutor in a county, in case after case, whatever the circumstances, whatever the crime and whoever the defendant or the victim may be, is responsible for the removal of Negroes who have been selected as qualified jurors by the jury commissioners and who have survived challenges for cause, with the result that no Negroes ever serve on petit juries,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““In order to obtain judicial relief, the language of the prosecuting officer in the opening statement must be such that its unavoidable effect is to so prejudice the jury against the accused and prevent the finding of a true verdict. . . . ””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.