Commonwealth v. May’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 43 later decisions — most recently December 2014 · most notably Commonwealth v. Champney (2003), Commonwealth v. Spotz (2011)
3 federal appellate · 40 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 Local 408, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. National Labor Relations Board · Simmons v. South Carolina · Great State Beverages, Inc. v. Wenners · Attwood v. Singletary · Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer
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 43 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) the sentence of death was the product of passion, prejudice, or any arbitrary factor; (2) the evidence fails to support the findings of at least one aggravating circumstance specified in subsection (d); or (3) the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the circumstances of the crime and the character and record of the defendant. 21”
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.