Commonwealth v. Patterson’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently March 2017
22 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. Blair · Commonwealth v. Wable · Commonwealth v. Waters · Commonwealth v. Fortune · Commonwealth v. Grace
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“1)the victims were of totally different ages and sexual attractiveness; [ 7 ] 2) the weapons used were not identical; and, 8) nothing distinctive separated the two crimes involved from other street crimes .... 4) the rape charged occurred in a garage while the other occurred in [the appellant’s] apartment; 5) while both rapists wore sunglasses, the rapist here wore rose colored, light tinted sunglasses and, in the other he wore dark sunglasses; and, 6) the first rape also involved a robbery, violence by choking, and tying the victim, but there were no such incidents in the second rape.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The prosecutrix was accosted approximately the same time of night as the other rape victim, the two crimes were only five days apart and occurred in the same two-block area, and the attacker of both women wore sunglasses even though it was nighttime. The prosecutrix was taken into a garage in an alley; the other victim was being taken into an alley at gunpoint when she managed to talk her assailant into taking her indoors. Id. at 378 , 399 A.2d at 126 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[S]omething more [is required] than the commission of the same class of crime, such as theft, namely something unusual or distinctive as to be like a signature.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.