Commonwealth v. Watson’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 43 later decisions — most recently March 2020 · most notably State v. Harmon (1986), State v. Leidholm (1983)
41 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. Eberle · Commonwealth v. Burns · Commonwealth v. Moore
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 43 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[where] there has been physical abuse over a long period of time, the circumstances which assist the court in determining the reasonableness of a defendant's fear of death or serious injury at the time of a killing include the defendant's familiarity with the victim's behavior in the past.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Where an accused raises a defense of self-defense, the burden of the prosecution is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the killing was not done in self defense____ The Commonwealth sustains its burden if it proves any of the following: that the slayer was not free from fault in provoking or continuing the difficulty which resulted in the slaying; that the slayer did not reasonably believe that [he] was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, and that it was necessary to kill in order to save [him]self therefrom; or that the slayer violated a duty to retreat or avoid the danger. Commonwealth v. Burns, 490 Pa. 352, 354 , 416 A.2d 506, 507 (1980) in Commonwealth v. Watson, 494 Pa. 467, 471 , 431 A.2d 949, 951 (1981).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The Commonwealth must prove every element of the offense, including criminal intent, beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . Although criminal intent can be inferred beyond a reasonable doubt from the surrounding circumstances, it cannot be inferred from mere possession.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.