Epperson v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Mills v. Commonwealth (1999), Hodge v. Federal Bureau of Investigation (2013)
1 federal appellate · 35 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 Strickland v. Washington · Brady v. State of Maryland · United States v. Agurs · Cuyler v. Sullivan · United States v. Young
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“that a photograph, otherwise admissible, does not become inadmissible simply because it is gruesome and the crime is heinous.... "Were the rule otherwise, the state would be precluded from proving the commission of a crime that is by nature heinous and repulsive.... Where the photographs reveal[ ] nothing more than the scene of the crime and the person[ ] of the victim[ ], they [a]re not incompetent."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“(1) Whenever the death penalty is imposed for a capital offense . . . the sentence shall be reviewed on the record by the Supreme Court. . . . . . . . (3) With regard to the sentence, the court shall determine: . . . . (c) Whether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the crime and the defendant.”
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.