Commonwealth v. Thornton’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
80 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 82 later decisions — most recently February 2019 · most notably Commonwealth v. Hawkins (1997), Commonwealth v. Smith (1989)
80 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 Chapman v. State of California · Bruton v. United States · Lutwak v. United States · Commonwealth v. Story · Commonwealth v. McCusker
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 82 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he doctrine of harmless error is a technique of appellate review designed to advance judicial economy by obviating the necessity for a retrial where the appellate court is convinced that a trial error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Its purpose is premised on the well-settled proposition that “[a] defendant is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one.””
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Determination of the relevancy of evidence offered at trial requires a two-step analysis. It must be determined first if the inference sought to be raised by the evidence bears upon a matter in issue in the case and, second, whether the evidence renders the desired inference more probative than it would be without the evidence.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“impassioned to the extent that his mind was incapable of cool reflection.”
2 later decisions 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.