Shepard v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
290 U.S. 96 · 1933
Citation profile
280 federal appellate · 18 district · 481 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 912 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2025 · most notably Bruton v. United States (1968), Palmer v. Hoffman (1943)
280 federal appellate · 18 district · 481 state decisions — followed in 42 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Mattox v. United States · Mutual Life Ins Co of New York v. Hillmon · Josephine Throckmorton v. Washington Holt · Commonwealth v. Trefethen
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 912 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When the risk of confusion is so great as to upset the balance of advantage, the evidence goes out.”
34 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“spoke to a past act, and more than that, to an act by some one not the speaker.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he declarant must have spoken without hope of recovery and in the shadow of impending death.... Fear or even belief that illness will end in death will not avail itself to make a dying declaration. There must be ‘a settled hopeless expectation’ that death is near at hand, and what is said must have been spoken in the hush of its impending presence. ... What is decisive is the state of mind. Even so, the state of mind must be exhibited in the evidence, and not left to conjecture. The patient must have spoken with the consciousness of a swift and certain doom.”
11 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.