Commonwealth v. Simmons’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
43 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 43 later decisions — most recently November 2008 · most notably Commonwealth v. Harper (1979), Commonwealth v. Baumhammers (2008)
43 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 Wong Sun v. United States · Ker v. State of California · McCray v. State of Illinois · Commonwealth v. Blair · Commonwealth v. Futch
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 43 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 establish 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 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.)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“. . . Moreover, it is the province of the trier of fact to pass upon the credibility of witnesses and the weight to be accorded the evidence produced. . . . The factfinder is free to believe all, part, or none of the evidence. (Citations omitted.) Factual disputes are for the jury to resolve, and the court below did not commit error in allowing the jury to consider the murder indictment. . . .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.