Thompson v. Calderon’s Empirical Analysis
120 F.3d 1045 · 1997
Citation profile
37 federal appellate · 1 district · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 88 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Calderon v. Thompson (1998), State v. Colon (2004)
37 federal appellate · 1 district · 29 state decisions — followed in 15 states
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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2244 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) · 28 U.S.C. § 46
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Brady v. State of Maryland · United States v. Agurs · Kyles v. Whitley · Berger v. United States
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 88 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The prosecution’s theories of the same crime in the two different trials negate one another. They are totally inconsistent. This flip-flopping of theories of the offense was fundamentally unfair. ... The state cannot divide and conquer in this manner.... Such actions reduce criminal trials to mere gamesmanship and rob them of their supposed search for truth. In prosecuting [both defendants] for[a crime that only one could commit], the prosecutor changed his theory of what happened to suit the state. This distortion rendered [the first defendant’s] trial fundamentally unfair.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[t]he prosecutor manipulated evidence and witnesses, argued inconsistent motives, and at [the other man accused of committing the murder's] trial essentially ridiculed the theory he had used to obtain a conviction and death sentence at Thompson's trial[,]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“in Nevius, we explicitly stated that 'Nevius wants us to recall our mandate ... not to nullify an erroneous decision, but to reopen the proceeding so that he may present new claims that cannot be addressed in a subsequent petition.' This statement recognizes ... that the mandate may be recalled to correct an erroneous decision which would result in a manifest injustice.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Burris v. Parke
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.