Commonwealth v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently June 2015 · most notably Commonwealth v. Dussinger (1978), Commonwealth v. Green (1978)
30 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 Commonwealth v. Futch · Commonwealth v. Kichline · Commonwealth v. Davenport · Commonwealth v. Williams · Commonwealth v. Rowe
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ . . . Although there is no single litmus-paper test for determining the voluntariness of a confession, it must be established that the decision to speak was a product of a free and unconstrained choice of its maker. . All attending circumstances surrounding the confession must be considered in this determination. These include: the duration and methods of the interrogation; the length of delay between arrest and arraignment; the conditions of detainment; the attitudes of the police toward defendant; defendant’s physical and psychological state; and all other conditions present which may serve to drain one’s power of resistance to suggestion or to undermine one’s self-determination.” (Citations omitted.)”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Our review is limited to determining whether the findings of the court below are supported by the record and whether the inferences and legal conclusions based thereon are correct. Further, we need consider only the Commonwealth’s evidence and so much of the appellant’s evidence as remains uncontradicted.” Commonwealth v. Williams, 476 Pa. 344 , 382 A.2d 1202 (1978).”
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.