Commonwealth v. Carter’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 85 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 87 later decisions — most recently March 2023 · most notably Commonwealth v. Frey (1984), Commonwealth v. Jones (1992)
2 federal appellate · 85 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 Ex Rel. Washington v. Maroney · Roberts v. Louisiana · Hopper v. Evans · United States v. Peltier · Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer
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 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(b) Unreasonable belief killing justifiable. — A person who intentionally or knowingly kills an individual commits voluntary manslaughter if at the time of the killing he believes the circumstances to be such that, if they existed, would justify the killing under Chapter 5 of this title (relating to general principles of justification), but his belief is unreasonable.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is clear in this case that appellant did not suffer prejudice from the refusal of such an instruction in view of the jury’s decision to ignore their right to return a verdict of second degree. There is not the slightest reason to believe that the jury would have returned a verdict of voluntary manslaughter out of sympathy or in recognition of factors that they may have deemed mitigating where these factors were not sufficiently compelling to cause them to elect the lesser alternative that was offered.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] trial court shall only instruct on an offense where the offense has been made an issue in the case and where the trial evidence reasonably would support such a verdict.... Instructions regarding matters which are not before the court or which are not supported by the evidence serve no purpose other than to confuse the jury.”
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.