Pierce v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 45 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 51 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2021 · most notably Rousseau v. State (1993), Narvaiz v. State (1992)
1 federal appellate · 45 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 Davis v. Alaska · Pointer v. Texas · Wainwright v. Witt · Penry v. Lynaugh · Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Ortiz v. State · Duckett v. State“There is no more certain test for determining when experts may be used than the common sense inquiry whether an untrained layman would be qualified to determine intelligently and to the best possible degree the particular issue without enlightenment from those having a specialized understanding of the subject involved in the dispute_ When opinions are excluded, it is because they are unhelpful and therefore superfluous and a waste of time.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“You are hereby instructed that you can consider all mitigating circumstances in regards to the punishment of the defendant herein. Mitigation will not be defined for you; but you may consider the age, race, background, sex, history, and all matters related to this defendant that have been put before you.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Pierce v. Thaler
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.