Smith v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 85 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 100 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2015 · most notably Deboue v. Louisiana (1990), Goins v. Commonwealth (1996)
6 federal appellate · 85 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Sandstrom v. Montana · Booth v. Maryland · Bottoson v. Florida · Morris v. Gressette
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 100 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Stamper provides the reason for excluding the type of evidence Smith champions. There, we said: The state of knowledge in the fields of medicine and psychiatry is subject to constant advance and change. The classifications and gradations applied to mental illnesses, disorders, and defects are frequently revised. The courts cannot, and should not, become dependent upon these subtle and shifting gradations for the resolution of each specific case.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“`may infer malice from the deliberate use of a deadly weapon unless, from all the evidence, you have a reasonable doubt as to whether malice existed.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Avent v. Com. · Thomas v. Com.“Just before 9:00 p.m., a number of police officers arrived on the scene and parked where their vehicles would not arouse Smith’s suspicions. Officer Anderson, in one of the units, observed Smith “sitting on his front porch.” Anderson directed the dispatcher to “[h]ave a unit cruise around ... to the rear of the townhouses.” The dispatcher relayed the order to Sgt. John Conner, a uniformed officer, who indicated that “he was en route.” At this point, Smith “was still on [his] front steps,” but when “some person ... started across the street,” Smith “immediately got up” and went inside. In a few moments, Sgt. Conner reported on his portable radio: “I’ve got him in sight he’s coming out the back door.” Other officers proceeded toward the rear of the house, and one of them, James K. Ryan, heard Sgt. Conner say: “Drop the rifle, drop the rifle now.” Ryan then heard “gunfire going off,” consisting of “eight to 12 ... real sharp ... cracks,” followed by “a short pop and after that ... there was a succession of real sharp cracks again.” Ryan heard a man “groaning or ... moaning” and, when he ran around the end of a fence separating Smith’s back yard from his neighbor’s, he saw Sgt. Conner lying on the ground in a “bare spot in the alleyway.” Ryan observed “a lot of blood around [Conner’s] head and two wounds in his back.” Ryan left Conner in the care of another officer and went to help subdue Smith, who was struggling with several officers some twenty to twenty-five feet from Conner’”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Smith v. Angelone
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.