Commonwealth v. Collins’s Empirical Analysis
2001
Citation profile
63 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 63 later decisions — most recently November 2024 · most notably Commonwealth v. Grant (2002), Commonwealth v. Davidson (2007)
63 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 Blockburger v. United States · Phillips v. A-Best Products Co. · Commonwealth v. Anderson · Commonwealth v. Weakland · Commonwealth v. Comer
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 63 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a rule of statutory construction designed to determine whether the legislature intended for the punishment of one offense to encompass that for another offense arising from the same criminal act or transaction.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Although, mechanically, the General Assembly reposited the homicide by vehicle/DUI provisions in a separate section of the Vehicle Code, the essential import of this act was to increase the grading of homicide by vehicle/DUI ... and provide a mandatory minimum sentence of three years imprisonment. Further, the act amended Section 3732 (homicide by vehicle) by adding the words “except Section 3731(DUI).” Thus, the Legislature clearly indicated that while the commission of any traffic violation that resulted in the loss of human life was a serious offense, driving under the influence implicated a greater social evil and therefore warranted a concomitantly greater and more certain penalty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“a. Do convictions for homicide by vehicle and homicide by vehicle-DUI fail to merge for license suspension purposes because the statutory elements of the two offenses are mutually exclusive and Section 1532(a.l) of the Vehicle Code explicitly provides a suspension for each offense? b. Does the difference between criminal and civil proceedings and the lack of an explicit provision on merger in the Vehicle Code support different merger rules for license suspension purposes than for criminal sentencing purposes?”
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.