Commonwealth v. Breakiron’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 77 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 87 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2023 · most notably Deboue v. Louisiana (1990), Commonwealth v. Edmiston (1993)
6 federal appellate · 77 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 Illinois v. Gates · Wong Sun v. United States · National Association for Advancement of Colored People v. Y Button · Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer · Commonwealth v. Gray
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.
“In testing whether there has been a sufficient cooling period, a court must investigate what a panel of prospective jurors has said about its exposure to the publicity in question. This is one indication of whether the cooling period has been sufficient. Thus, in determining the efficacy of the cooling period, a court will consider the direct effects of publicity, something a defendant need not allege or prove. Although it is conceivable that pre-trial publicity could be so extremely damaging that a court might order a change of venue no matter what the prospective jurors said about their ability to hear the case fairly and without bias, that would be a most unusual case. Normally, what prospective jurors tell us about their ability to be impartial will be a reliable guide to whether the publicity is still so fresh in their minds that it has removed their ability to be objective. The discretion of the trial judge is given wide latitude in this area.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“except that evidence of such intoxication or drugged condition of the defendant may be offered by the defendant whenever it is relevant to reduce murder from a higher degree to a lower degree of murder.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“‘publicity which is harmful to the accused, and which may or may not require a change of venue depending upon what effect it has had in the community from which prospective jurors are drawn.’ Factors to consider in the determination as to whether publicity is inherently prejudicial include: ‘whether the pre-trial publicity was, on the one hand, factual and objective, or, on the other hand, consisted of sensational, inflammatory and ‘slanted articles demanding conviction’ ...; whether the pre-trial publicity revealed the existence of the accused’s prior criminal record; whether it referred to confessions, admissions or reenactments of the crime by the defendant; and whether such information is the product of reports by the police and prosecutorial officers.”
3 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.