Commonwealth v. Ritchie’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2018 · most notably Pennsylvania v. Ritchie (1987), 219 N.J. Super. 452 - State v. Cusick (1987)
47 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 Davis v. Alaska · Ohio v. Roberts · Pointer v. Texas · Roviaro v. United States · United States v. Nixon
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When materials gathered become an arrow of inculpation, the person inculpated has a fundamental constitutional right to examine the provenance of the arrow and he who aims it.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“Given those [sixth amendment] principles, we must conclude that the trial court erred in refusing appellee access to the [welfare] files. * * * [W]e find that the Commonwealth’s interest in maintaining the confidentiality of these records may not override a defendant’s right to effectively confront and cross-examine the witnesses against him.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“(1) only "notes that are verbatim accounts of the complainant's declarations and notes that the complainant has approved as accurately reflecting what she said" are to be inspected by defense counsel; (2) the trial court is to conduct an in camera inquiry to determine whether the matters contained in the rape crisis counselor's files are such verbatim only "statements"; (3) after the trial court identifies the verbatim statements of the complainant, the defense counsel is to examine "these statements with an eye toward the utility or permissibility of their ultimate use at trial"; and (4) the defense counsel need not be given access to all statements in the file rather, the court is to withhold from defense inspection "statements contained in a ... file [that] have no bearing whatsoever on the facts of the alleged offense and [that] relate instead only to ... counselling services...." [ Ritchie, supra, 502 A. 2d at 156 ( quoting PAAR, supra, 428 A. 2d at 132 )].”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.