Shepard v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 state decisions

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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “never expressed similar reservations about psychological evidence whose purpose is merely to establish that certain testimony is not necessarily untruthful or that certain conduct is not necessarily indicative of guilt[.] [The] more modest aim of [such] psychological testimony ... is to assist the jury in reaching its own interpretation of the evidenced]”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Plate v. State · Reece v. State

2. “We have recognized a special danger when an expert is allowed to apply a novel psychological profile to identify a person as a member of a certain group or class in order to prove that the person [has] testified truthfully or acted unlawfully. ' Because the expert in effect assumes the role of human polygraph in such cases, we have ... required] the proponent of [such] evidence to demonstrate that the psychological profile involved in the case has been generally accepted as valid and that the expert’s testimony concerning the profile has particularized relevance to issues actually in dispute. We have never authorized expert testimony seeking to establish that a person is a member of a particular class or group, i.e., battered women or sexually abused children, by showing that [the person] exhibit[s] behavioral characteristics common to that group.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Plate v. State