Commonwealth v. Bradley’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
57 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably Commonwealth v. Chester (1999), Commonwealth v. Carpenter (1999)
57 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 County of Los Angeles v. Chavez-Salido · Parker v. Gladden · Commonwealth v. Truitt · Commonwealth v. Richardson · Sebastianelli v. Prudential Insurance Co. of America
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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he reason for prohibiting a trial judge from communicating with a jury ex parte is to prevent the court from unduly influencing the jury and to afford counsel an opportunity to become aware and to seek to correct any error which might occur. Where there is no showing either that the court’s actions may have influenced the jury or that its directions were erroneous, then the reason for the rule dissolves.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Johnson v. White“Let the record show that the court officer received the following inquiry from the jury during their deliberations, “May we see or hear the hospital report on Nina Rothschild.” Upon being advised of this memorandum, the court advised the court officer to instruct the jury that the hospital report had been put in by stipulation, and to continue their deliberations.”
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.