Sullivan v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1926
Citation profile
24 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently May 2012 · most notably State v. Thornton (1962), Laswell v. State (2012)
24 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 Hollingsworth v. State · Harris v. State · Bullen v. State · Smith v. State · Magness v. State
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““* * * ‘Where the purpose of evidence is to disclose a motive for the killing, the courts are very liberal in permitting its introduction, and anything and everything that might have influenced the prisoner to commit the act may, as a rule, be shown.’ Many cases are cited in the note to sustain the text. “See also 30 C. J. 179, § 406, and Stokes v. State, 71 Ark. 113 , and at p. 117, 71 S. W. 248 , where we quoted from Mr. Wills on Circumstantial Evidence as follows: ‘It is indispensable, in the investigation of imputed guilt, to look at all the surrounding circumstances which connect the actor with other persons and things, and may have operated as motives and influenced his actions.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Ederington v. State
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.