Commonwealth v. Pina’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “if there is some basis for concluding that the witness is more likely to correctly identify the defendant from the photograph than is the jury. Put another way, 'such testimony is admissible ... when the witness possesses sufficiently relevant familiarity with the defendant that the jury cannot also possess.'”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 95 Mass. App. Ct. 343 - Commonwealth v. Matos

2. “testimony of a police officer, with its possibly greater imprint of authority as to identification of a defendant ... is not permissible absent some compelling reason that the police officer is in a better position than the jury to identify the defendant”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Hobbs

3. “A manslaughter instruction is required if the evidence, considered in the light most favorable to a defendant, would permit * a verdict of manslaughter and not murder.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Garcia