O'Brian v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1872
Citation profile
4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2007
4 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.
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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The right of trial by jury is of but little value to the citizen in a criminal prosecution against him if [the guarantee against double jeopardy] can be violated and the accused left without remedy. If the judge can arbitrarily discharge and impanel juries until one is obtained that will render such a verdict as the state demands, or the attorney for the prosecution desires, and the only protection against such oppression is that a new trial may be ordered in the court trying him, or by the court of last resort, then of what value is this boasted right?”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Crist v. Bretz
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.