Ward v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions (6 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2017
17 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 Jackson v. Denno · Gregg v. Georgia · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Chaffin v. Stynchcombe · Stroud 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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"The same defendant was tried previously on the same charges and the jury imposed a life sentence. Therefore the death sentence in the case under review is obviously disproportionate to the life sentence previously imposed against the same defendant in the same case. Accordingly, the law requires us to vacate the death sentence and direct the imposition of a life sentence.... To do otherwise would be incongruous and contrary to the clear mandate of the law. For as was said by the United States Supreme Court in Gregg , `[t]he provision for appellate review in the Georgia capital-sentencing system serves as a check against the random or arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. In particular, the proportionality review substantially eliminates the possibility that a person will be sentenced to die by action of an aberrant jury.' Gregg, supra, 428 U.S. at 206 , 96 S.Ct. at 2940 ."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The court's charge shows that the intelligence factor was not highlighted or singled out; it was one of several factors which could be considered. The charge given was identical to the pattern charge prepared by the Council of Superior Court Judges and very similar to the charge [previously] approved by this court. . . .”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Howard v. State“But as noted above, the prosecuting attorney in this case conceded during oral argument that the state's evidence in a second trial would be the same as that presented at the first trial. The principal opinion also says that the fact the”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.