In Re Heidnik’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently October 2013
20 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 Dusky v. United States · Whitmore v. Arkansas · Ford v. Wainwright · McFarland v. Scott · Rees v. Peyton
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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To prevent the inquiry from being used solely for delay by persons opposed to executions in the abstract, the court should require at a minimum that the putative next friend set forth specific reasons why he or she believes that the particular condemned prisoner does not comprehend the penalty or its implications. Or where the prisoner has waived his right to pursue direct and/or collateral review of his conviction and it has been determined that he was competent to do so, as in Whitmore, the court may require a more significant showing, in the nature of changed circumstances, before requiring a hearing.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The United States Supreme Court, in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 106 S.Ct. 2595 , 91 L.Ed.2d 335 (1986), determined that this proscription is incorporated in the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. The several opinions in support of the judgment in that case suggested that the minimum elements for determining ‘sanity’ in this context relate to the person’s awareness of the punishment and the reasons for it, or as we put it in Commonwealth v. Jermyn, 539 Pa. 371 , 652 A.2d 821, 824 (Pa.1995), whether the person “comprehends the reason for the death penalty and its implications.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“First, a “next friend” must provide an adequate explanation — such as inaccessibility, mental incompetence, or other disability — why the real party in interest cannot appear on his own behalf to prosecute the action. Second, the “next friend” must be truly dedicated to the best interests of the person on whose behalf he seeks to litigate, and it has been further suggested that a “next friend” must have some significant relationship with the real party in interest.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Commonwealth v. Haag
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.