Commonwealth v. Meyer’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 87 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 101 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2020 · most notably Berkemer v. McCarty (1984), Pennsylvania v. Bruder (1988)
2 federal appellate · 87 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Beckwith v. United States · Commonwealth v. Bosurgi · Gilbert v. Korvette's Inc. · Commonwealth v. Yount
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 101 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"This test for `custodial interrogation' has been consistently applied in this Commonwealth, with a nuance added by subsequent developments. [T]his jurisdiction's test of `custodial interrogation' examines more than actual deprivation of freedom. Pennsylvania's test for custodial interrogation is whether the suspect is physically deprived of his freedom in any significant way or is placed in a situation in which he reasonably believes that his freedom of action or movement is restricted by said interrogation....”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“11. Professor Kamisar has recently characterized the “reasonable belief” standard as the “best approach.” See Remarks of Professor Kamisar at the First Annual Su preme Court Review and Constitutional Law Symposium reprinted in The Supreme Court 1978-79 Ch. 12 p. 184 (1979). “This approach seems most consistent with Miranda and it avoids reliance on self-serving statements either by the police or by the suspect himself. This approach also avoids the need to determine the police interrogator’s state of mind and frees the police officers from the responsibility for the idiosyncrasies of various suspects.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“reasonably believes his freedom of action is being restricted”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Berkemer v. McCarty
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.