Edmonds v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 60 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 74 later decisions — most recently January 2014 · most notably Frye v. Commonwealth (1986), Watkins v. Commonwealth (1985)
4 federal appellate · 60 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 Barefoot v. Estelle · Godfrey v. Georgia · Tison v. Arizona · Smith v. Commonwealth · Von Byrd v. Texas
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 74 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“interdependent objects of a common criminal design.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing serious threat to society”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“that on January 31,1982, Bunch went to [the victim’s] home with the intent to kill her and steal her property, that he did kill her as planned, and that he did steal property from her person. She may or may not have been alive at the time he stole her property, and she may even have been dead for some time when he accomplished the theft. Neither of these eventualities is material, however; the important considerations are that robbery was the motive for the killing and that Bunch had the intent to rob when he killed [the victim]. Nor does it make any difference whether, as Bunch asserts, “the items [stolen] could have been taken from parts of the residence away from where the victim was shot.””
1 later decision 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.