Commonwealth v. Stanley’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 34 later decisions — most recently March 2017 · most notably Commonwealth v. Stanley (1982), Commonwealth v. Ragan (1994)
34 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. Kichline · Commonwealth v. Allen · Commonwealth v. Wable · Commonwealth v. Peterson · Commonwealth v. Faison
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 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Commonwealth must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant has committed the particular crime of which he is accused, and it may not strip him of the presumption of innocence by proving that he has committed other criminal acts. There are, of course, important exceptions to the rule where the prior criminal acts are so closely related to the crime charged that they show, inter aha, motive, intent, malice, identity, or a common scheme, plan or design.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Certainly appellant’s prior assaults upon persons bearing no known similarity or connection to the victim and in circumstances in which appellant or his sister-in-law were in some way threatened show no intent, motive, plan, scheme, or design to kill the victim and reveal no malice or ill will against him.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Commonwealth v. Yale
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.