Commonwealth v. Cherry’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
83 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 83 later decisions — most recently August 2018 · most notably State v. Mason (1986), Commonwealth v. Cliff (1979)
83 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 Chapman v. State of California · Griffin v. California · Berger v. United States · Commonwealth v. Kichline · Di Carlo v. United States
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 83 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"The prosecutor should not use arguments calculated to inflame the passions or prejudices of the jury."”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““[a prosecutor] is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor — indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Please tell the people of Philadelphia that where (sic) one, even though he doesn’t pull the trigger, takes part in and knows ahead of time that there is going to be a robbery, knows that at least one of the men has a gun, knows all that, goes along with it,' tell everybody by your verdict that you are not going to put up with shootings on the street like the wild west.”
2 later decisions 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.