West v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 36 later decisions — most recently December 2018 · most notably West v. Seabold (1996), Stringer v. Commonwealth (1997)
3 federal appellate · 33 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 Sanborn v. Commonwealth · Ice v. Commonwealth · Brown v. Commonwealth · Cosby v. Commonwealth · Taul v. Commonwealth
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 36 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is only where evidence for a defendant conclusively establishes justification that he is entitled to a directed verdict.... If the testimony relied on to establish self-defense is contradicted or if there is evidence of any fact or circumstance from which a jury could reasonably conclude that some element of self-defense was lacking, a directed verdict should not be given.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Rarely is a defendant relying upon self-defense entitled to a directed verdict. Only in the unusual case in which the evidence conclusively establishes justification and all of the elements of self-defense are present is it proper to direct a verdict of not guilty.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“When a defendant's attorney is aware of an issue and elects to raise no objection, the attorney's failure to object may constitute a waiver of an error having constitutional magnitude.”
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.