Commonwealth v. Keefer’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions — most recently June 2000
23 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 Lefkowitz v. Newsome · Commonwealth v. Campana · Commonwealth v. Campana · Commonwealth v. Agie · Russell v. Douthitt
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[I]t would make no sense to try a juvenile as an adult on a felony murder charge in the criminal division and as a juvenile on the underlying felony in the juvenile court division. To do so would not only subject the defendant to the ordeal of two trials but also to the hazard of inconsistent verdicts and separate sentences imposed by separate judges neither of whom possesses an over-all perspective. At a time when both this Court and the legislature in the recent Crimes Code, have signalled that all offenses arising out of a single criminal episode or course of conduct should, in the interest of fairness to a defendant, not to speak of economy of judicial resources, be tried together, it would be anomalous for us to mandate a different result with respect to this juvenile charged with felony murder.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“(e) Murder. — Where the petition [alleging delinquency] alleges conduct which if proven would constitute murder, the court shall require the offense to be prosecuted under the criminal law and procedures, except where the case has been transferred [to the juvenile division] pursuant to section 6322 (relating to transfer from criminal proceedings) from the division or a judge of the court assigned to conduct criminal proceedings.”
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.