Commonwealth v. Richardson’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently June 2019 · most notably Commonwealth v. DeHart (1986), Commonwealth v. Steele (2008)
24 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 Ham v. South Carolina · Ross v. Massachusetts · Commonwealth v. Futch · Commonwealth v. Christian · Commonwealth v. Brown
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[u]nder the circumstances, where there are not factors present to infuse the case with an enhanced racial sensitivity, and racial differences were not a focus of evidence at trial, the one voir dire question posed by the trial court was sufficiently specific and probing to reveal prejudices which might have bearing upon the case.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“1. Are there any people on the jury who are prejudiced in any way against black people? 2. [Defendant] is a black man who is charged with raping a white woman. Because of the races of the two parties involved in this case, do you think you would have any difficulty being fair to either side? 3. Do you believe that black people are generally more dishonest than white people? 4. Do you believe black men like to rape white women? 5. If the woman were to testify that the incident happened one way and [defendant] would testify that the incident happened in an entirely different way, would you tend to believe the testimony of the complainant merely because she was white?”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“I believe that the prosecution of a member of one race on charges of the rape of a victim of another race necessarily presents a race sensitive situation. In such situations, the trial court should permit the questioning of prospective jurors to expose any racial inclinations or biases which might cause a juror to disregard his or her obligation to apply the law impartially to the facts of the case. (Emphasis added).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.