Commonwealth v. Jones’s Empirical Analysis
2002
Citation profile
31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently April 2021 · most notably Commonwealth v. McGill (2003), Commonwealth v. Collins (2005)
31 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 Strickland v. Washington · Commonwealth v. Pierce · Schneider National Carriers v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board · 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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When appellate counsel fails to advance an issue that would, if raised, have entitled his or her client to a new trial, or a new sentencing hearing in a capital case, I simply cannot see how this strategy would ever be reasonable. Although I realize that trial lawyers, in arguing a case to a jury, often forego meritorious objections for a variety of strategic reasons (for example, not wishing to confuse the jury on a technical issue, the possibility of defense theories appearing to conflict, credibility with the jury, etc.), appellate litigation presents entirely different considerations. * * * In brief, if the underlying claim of error is of such an important magnitude that it would have entitled a defendant to relief had it been raised on appeal, there can be no justification for the failure of appellate counsel to pursue the claim that would ever qualify as a reasonable professional judgment.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Commonwealth v. May
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.