Ferguson v. State’s Empirical Analysis
2008
Citation profile
27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 28 later decisions — most recently June 2023 · most notably Bush v. State (2009), Moody v. State (2011)
27 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 Teague v. Lane · Linkletter v. Walker · Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson · Collins v. Youngblood · Hanover Shoe, Inc. v. United Shoe MacHinery Corp.
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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““‘[T]he death penalty should be carried out only after this Court has found it appropriate to do so by independently weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances.’ Ex parte Hays, 518 So.2d 768, 780 (Ala.1986) (opinion on rehearing). Therefore, while the trial court, acting without the guidance offered by Carroll, gave ‘serious consideration to the unanimous recommendation of the jury for life [imprisonment] without parole,’ we are compelled to treat the jury’s recommendation as a mitigating circumstance. Indeed, we must give that mitigating circumstance great weight. “‘The weight to be given [a jury’s recommendation of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole] should depend upon the number of jurors recommending a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.’ [Ex parte ] Carroll, 852 So.2d [833] at 836 [ (Ala.2002) ]. In Carroll, we found that a jury’s 10-2 vote for a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole demonstrated ‘overwhelming support’ of such a sentence. 852 So.2d at 837 . Therefore, it is only logical to conclude that a unanimous recommendation like the one here provides even more ‘overwhelming support’ of such a sentence and, therefore, must be afforded great weight. [[Image here]] “ ‘[T]he jury’s recommendation [of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole] may be overridden based upon information known only to the trial court and not to the jury, when such information can properly be used to undermine a mitiga”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Bush v. State
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.