Commonwealth v. Junta’s Empirical Analysis
2004
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently June 2022
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 6 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 Brady v. State of Maryland · Blakely v. Washington · Williams v. People of State of New York · Commonwealth v. Grace · Commonwealth v. Tucceri
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“After examining Dr. Kessler’s testimony and the abstract, we conclude, as did the motion judge (who was also the trial judge), that the defendant has not met his burden. The abstract is not inconsistent with Dr. Kessler’s testimony, and, moreover, the defendant overstates the factual importance of the experts’ testimony in this case. Although the defendant urges that Dr. Kessler testified that multiple blows caused the rupture of the vertebral artery, he did not so testify. What led him to the conclusion of multiple blows was the fact that there were also other injuries including “the injury in the middle of the brain.” He stated, “Taking into account the tearing of the small vessels in the cavity of the brain we call the ventricle. Taking into account the amount of blood and tearing of the vertebral injury and the bruising and hemorrhage in the vertebral arteries on both sides. And the hemorrhage in the neck. This is a substantial force injury. It takes a lot of trauma to tear ligaments and the ligaments at the back of the skull are torn and hemorrhaged.” That the abstract reported that tearing of the vertebral artery may typically be caused by minor blows in no way contradicts Dr. Kessler’s testimony that due to the severity of the injuries in this case, multiple blows were here inflicted. Perhaps even more important, the testimony of the percipient witnesses belied the claim of one or minimal blows. No witness testified that the defendant hit Costin only once, and the defe”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Junta v. Thompson“in fact provided defense counsel with an updated copy of Dr. Kessler's curriculum vitae on the morning of his testimony” [but that] [t]here were”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Junta v. Thompson“that bruises are not immediately visible but may take a day or two to appear”
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.