Smith v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
41 federal appellate · 239 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 331 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably Smith v. Murray (1986), State v. Ramseur (1987)
41 federal appellate · 239 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Wong Sun v. United States · Escobedo v. Illinois · Gregg v. Georgia · Witherspoon v. Illinois
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 331 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a battery which, qualitatively and quantitatively, is more culpable than the minimum necessary to accomplish an act of murder.”
19 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The penalty of death shall not be imposed unless the Commonwealth shall prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there is a probability based upon evidence of the prior history of the defendant or of the circumstances surrounding the commission of the offense of which he is accused that he would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing serious threat to society, or that his conduct in committing the offense was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman, in that it involved torture, depravity of mind or aggravated battery to the victim.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind or an aggravated battery to the victim,”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.