Winston v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
172 U.S. 303 · 1899
Citation profile
84 federal appellate · 7 district · 58 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 188 later decisions (20 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2016 · most notably Furman v. Georgia (1972), Woodson v. North Carolina (1976)
84 federal appellate · 7 district · 58 state decisions — followed in 14 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Hopt v. People of the Territory of Utah · People Parke Davis Co v. Roberts · Hopt v. People · Davis v. People of Territory of Utah
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 188 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““How far considerations of age, sex, ignorance, illness or intoxication, of human passion or weakness, or sympathy or clemency, or the ir-revocableness of an executed sentence of death, or an apprehension that explanatory facts may exist which have not been brought to light, or any other consideration whatever, should be allowed weight in deciding the question whether the accused, in the event of his conviction of the crime of murder in the first degree, should or should not be capitally punished, is committed by the Act of Congress to the sound discretion of the jury and of the jury alone.””
19 later decisions quote this exact passage“'The instructions of the judge to the jury, in each of the three cases now before this court, clearly gave the jury to understand that the act of Congress did not intend or authorize the jury to qualify their verdict by the addition of the words 'without capital punishment,' unless mitigating or palliating circumstances were proved.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“; and whenever the jury shall return a verdict qualified as aforesaid the person convicted shall be sentenced to imprisonment ... for life.' 29 Stat. at L. 487 ...”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Green · People v. Green
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.