State v. Pritchett’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 63 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 70 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2019 · most notably Bell v. Cone (2005), Petrocelli v. State (1985)
3 federal appellate · 63 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 Jackson v. Virginia · Gregg v. Georgia · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Furman v. Georgia · United States v. Matlock
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 70 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(7) The murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in committing, or was an accomplice in the commission of, or was attempting to commit, or was fleeing after committing or attempting to commit, (any first degree murder, arson, rape, robbery,) burglary, larceny, kidnapping, aircraft piracy, or unlawful throwing, placing or discharging of a destructive device or bomb; [Court’s parenthesis.]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Shepherd · State v. Buck“We have no way of knowing and cannot speculate whether the jury would have imposed the death penalty with one of the two aggravating circumstances withdrawn from their consideration and with the necessity of weighing the one remaining aggravating circumstance against the mitigating circumstances.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Howell · State v. Terry“[t]he short answer to the issue posed by defendant is that, conceding such a result may be possible in the trial court, it is the statutory and inherent obligation of this Court to correct the error on appeal. An integral part of the death penalty statute that must be construed in pari materia is the automatic review of every death sentence by this Court. T.C.A. § 39-2406. Subsection (c) of that statute enumerates our duties that include eliminating any arbitrary, exces sive, or disproportionate imposition of the death penalty....”
1 later decision 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.