Commonwealth v. Pitts’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
70 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 74 later decisions — most recently December 2014 · most notably 421 Pa. Super. 548 - Stidham v. Millvale Sportsmen's Club (1992), Commonwealth v. Edwards (1989)
70 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. Stoltzfus · Commonwealth v. Rose · Commonwealth v. Graves · Commonwealth v. Moore · Commonwealth v. Raymond
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 74 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The test of sufficiency of the evidence is whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth and drawing the proper inferences favorable to the Commonwealth, the trier of fact could reasonably have found that all of the elements of the crime [were] established beyond a reasonable doubt.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]t has long been the rule in this jurisdiction that if the ground upon which an objection is based is specifically stated, all other reasons for its exclusion are waived, and may not be raised post trial. Commonwealth v. McNeal, 456 Pa. 394, 398 , 319 A.2d 669 (1974); Commonwealth v. Budd, 443 Pa. 193, 195 , 278 A.2d 879 (1971); Commonwealth v. Raymond, 412 Pa. 194, 202-203 , 194 A.2d 150 (1963).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[m]urder of the third degree is a killing done with legal malice but without specific intent to kill. Murder of the third degree can, however, in some cases involve the specific intent to harm a victim as long as said intent falls short of the specific intent to kill.”
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.