Commonwealth v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
48 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently January 2018 · most notably Commonwealth v. Johnson (2009), Commonwealth v. Rollins (1999)
48 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 Batson v. Kentucky · Simmons v. South Carolina · Trident Associates Ltd. Partnership v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. · Great State Beverages, Inc. v. Wenners · Attwood v. Singletary
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) the defendant is a member of a cognizable racial group and the prosecutor exercised peremptory challenges to remove members of the defendant’s race from the venire; (2) the defendant can then rely on the fact that the use of peremptory challenges permits “those to discriminate who are of a mind to discriminate”; and (3) the defendant, through facts and circumstances, must raise an inference that the prosecutor excluded members of the venire on account of their race. The third prong requires defendant to make a record specifically identifying the race of all the venirepersons removed by the prosecution, the race of the jurors who served and the race of the jurors acceptable to the Commonwealth who were stricken by the defense.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“Now, in this case there was also evidence of alibi. Obviously, the defendant cannot be guilty unless he was at the scene of the alleged crime. The defendant in this case has offered evidence to show that he was not present at the scene of the crime but was at another location during the time the crime was allegedly committed. You should consider this evidence 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 the crime. The defendant’s evidence that he was not present either by itself or together with the other evidence may be sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt of his guilt in your minds. If you have a reasonable doubt of the defendant’s guilt, then you must find him not guilty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“(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.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.