Commonwealth v. Walters’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

19 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[w]here communication of the threat is indirect-for example, through an intermediary-the Commonwealth must prove ... the defendant intended the threat to reach the victim.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Bigelow · 93 Mass. App. Ct. 1109 - Commonwealth v. Jerez

2. “'True threats' encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals. . . . The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats 'protect[s] individuals from the fear of violence' and 'from the disruption that fear engenders,' in addition to protecting people 'from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur.'”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. COMMONWEALTH v. LEONARDO L., a juvenile.

3. “[w]hoever [1] willfully and maliciously engages in a knowing pattern of conduct or series of acts over a period of time directed at a specific person which seriously alarms or annoys that person and would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, and [2] makes a threat with the intent to place the person in imminent fear of death or bodily injury”

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