Commonwealth v. Irene’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

20 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[S]tatements admissible as spontaneous utterances must also satisfy the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, [which] bars the admission of testimonial out-of-court statements by a witness who does not appear at trial unless the witness is unavailable to testify and the defendant had an earlier opportunity for cross-examination”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Imbert

2. “[W]e have considered the contents of hospital records to be reliable, 'because the entries relating to treatment and medical history are routinely made by those responsible for making accurate entries and are relied on in the course of treating patients.'”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 94 Mass. App. Ct. 1113 - Commonwealth v. Barila

3. “sufficiently startling to impede normal reflective thought processes,”

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