Commonwealth v. Housewright’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “loaded and then fired a weapon that looked like a gun, sounded like a gun, and flashed like a gun”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Drapaniotis · 93 Mass. App. Ct. 1115 - Commonwealth v. Muniz

2. ““Where the Commonwealth claims that its witness is unavailable because of illness or infirmity and that it wishes to offer in evidence the prior recorded testimony of that witness, the Commonwealth bears the burden of showing that there is an unacceptable risk that the witness’s health would be significantly jeopardized if the witness were required to testify in court on the scheduled date. To meet this burden, the Commonwealth must provide the judge with reliable, up-to-date information sufficient to permit the judge to make an independent finding. See Commonwealth v. Bohannon, 385 Mass. 733, 744-745 (1992) (second motion judge could not rely on first motion judge’s unavailability determination made eight months before trial).””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 88 Mass. App. Ct. 776 - Commonwealth v. Dorisca

3. “there was no gun found, no casings or bullets recovered, no ballistics evidence, and no expert testimony.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 93 Mass. App. Ct. 1115 - Commonwealth v. Muniz