47 Wash. 2d 836 - State v. Petersen’s Empirical Analysis
1955
Citation profile
8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently April 2002
8 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.
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Autopsies, post mortems—Reports and records confidential—Exceptions. Reports and records of autopsies or post mortems shall be confidential, except that the following persons may examine and obtain copies of any such report or record: The personal representative of the decedent as defined in RCW 11.02.005, any family member, the attending physician, the prosecuting attorney or law enforcement agencies having jurisdiction, public health officials, or to the department of labor and industries in cases in which it has an interest under RCW 68.50.103.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“If this was not so, then a prosecutor, after obtaining an autopsy report, could pass it on to others, and the legislative pronouncement that such reports are confidential would be violated.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.