Spencer v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 2 district · 138 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 157 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2019 · most notably Kelly v. State (1992), Spencer v. Commonwealth (1990)
11 federal appellate · 2 district · 138 state decisions — followed in 23 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 Witherspoon v. Illinois · Wainwright v. Witt · Frye v. United States · Adams v. Texas · Lockhart v. McCree
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 157 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“1. Whether the sentence of death was imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice or any other arbitrary factor; and 2. Whether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the crime and the defendant.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]hen the sufficiency of the evidence is challenged on appeal, the evidence and all reasonable inferences fairly drawn therefrom must be viewed in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth. The trial court’s judgment should be affirmed unless it appears that it is plainly wrong or without evidence to support it.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he undisputed evidence showed that `DNA printing' is a reliable scientific technique.”
2 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.