Commonwealth v. Willis’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently April 2004 · most notably Commonwealth v. Saunders (1992), 395 Pa. Super. 608 - Commonwealth v. Weinder (1990)
28 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. Bonomo · Commonwealth v. Pounds · Allstate Insurance v. Kane
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The complained-of charge reads as follows: [Ojbviously, of course, the Defendant cannot be guilty unless he was at the scene of the alleged crime. The Defendant has offered evidence to show that he was not present at the crime, but rather at Robert Alderman’s house at an Amway demonstration and birthday get together. You should consider this evidence and alibi along with all the other evidence in the case in determining whether the Commonwealth has met its burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime was committed and that the Defendant himself committed it. The evidence presented by the defense that he was not present, if you believe it, either by itself or together with other evidence may be sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt of the Defendant’s guilt in your minds. If you have a reasonable doubt of the Defendant’s guilt, you must find him not guilty. On the other hand, you may choose to disbelieve and disregard the testimony concerning alibi and accept as true the testimony of the Commonwealth witnesses that the Defendant was present at the scene of the crime.”
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.