State v. Cotton’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 297 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 315 later decisions — most recently February 2026 · most notably State v. Smith (1997), State v. Moreland (1990)
10 federal appellate · 297 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 United States v. Jackson · Oregon v. Hass · Bell v. Ohio · State v. Nabozny · 71 Ill. 2d 254 - People v. Medina
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 315 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a scheme designed to implement the calculated decision to kill.”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage““No person shall purposely, and with prior calculation and design, cause the death of another.””
23 later decisions quote this exact passage““Where evidence adduced at trial reveals the presence of sufficient time and opportunity for the planning of., an. act of homicide to constitute prior calculation, and the circumstances surrounding the homicide show a scheme de-. signed to implement the calculated decision to kill, a find-' ing by the trier’ of fact of prior calculation and design is justified.””
3 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.