Commonwealth v. Walker’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 96 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 101 later decisions — most recently February 2017 · most notably Commonwealth v. Hall (1997), Commonwealth v. Wright (2008)
5 federal appellate · 96 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 Adams v. Texas · Local 408, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. National Labor Relations Board · Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. Weintraub · Batson v. Kentucky · Commonwealth v. Pierce
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 101 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a] criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(a) General rule. — A person who kills an individual without lawful justification commits voluntary manslaughter if at the time of the killing he is acting under a sudden and intense passion resulting from serious provocation by: (1) the individual killed; or (2) another whom the actor endeavors to kill, but he negligently or accidentally causes the death of the individual killed. (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. (c) Grading. — Voluntary manslaughter is a felony of the second degree.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he Commonwealth must prove every element necessary to establish murder of the first degree and every element necessary to establish one or more aggravating circumstance which the legislature has determined is of a sufficiently heinous nature as to require imposition of the death penalty. The accused is then given the opportunity to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that there are mitigating circumstances that might convince the jury that the sentence should nevertheless be set at life imprisonment. Such an allocation is not offensive to due process.”
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.