Coker v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1975
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 46 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 60 later decisions (8 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2015 · most notably Gregg v. Georgia (1976), Coker v. Georgia (1977)
6 federal appellate · 46 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 Nebbia v. People of State of New York · Jarrell v. State · Dingler v. State · Coley v. State · Chenault v. State
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 60 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In considering any given death sentence on appeal the Georgia Supreme Court is to determine whether the sentence imposed was consistent with the relevant statutes — i. e., whether there was sufficient evidence to support the finding of an aggravating circumstance. * * * However it must do much more than determine whether the penalty was lawfully imposed. It must go on to decide — after reviewing the penalties imposed in ‘similar cases’ — whether the penalty is ‘excessive or disproportionate’ considering both the crime and the defendant. * * * The new Assistant to the Supreme Court is to assist the court in collecting the records of ‘all capital felony cases’ in the State of Georgia in which sentence was imposed after January 1, 1970. * * * The Court also has the obligation of determining whether the penalty was ‘imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice or any other arbitrary factor.’ * * * The Georgia Supreme Court has interpreted the appellate review statute to require it to set aside the death sentence whenever juries across the State impose it only rarely for the type of crime in question; but to require it to affirm death sentences whenever juries across the State generally impose it for the crime in question. Thus in this case the Georgia Supreme Court concluded that the death penalty was so rarely imposed for the crime of robbery that it set aside the sentences on the robbery counts and effectively foreclosed that penalty from being imposed for that crime in t”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. White
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.