Commonwealth v. Sexton’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
84 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 86 later decisions — most recently December 2015 · most notably Commonwealth v. Baker (1992), Commonwealth v. Musi (1979)
84 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 United States v. Wade · Mapp v. Ohio · Neil v. Biggers · Stovall v. Denno · Manson v. Brathwaite
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 86 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is the likelihood of misidentification which violates a defendant’s right to due process and it is this which [is] the basis of the exclusion of the evidence ... Suggestive confrontations are disapproved because they increase the likelihood of misidentification, and unnecessarily suggestive ones are condemned for the further reason that the increase chance of misidentification is gratuitous.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The sole evidence connecting appellee to this crime was the identification of Mr. Weinstein, [the eyewitness] who had no knowledge of appellee before the incident, observed the culprit briefly before and during the crime, had no contact with the appellee between the arrest and the certification hearing, and had not been presented with an opportunity of a photographic identification prior to the hearing confrontation.”
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.