Spivey v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 128 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 137 later decisions — most recently May 2023 · most notably Smith v. Francis (1985), Hunt v. State (1990)
4 federal appellate · 128 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. Virginia · Jackson v. Denno · Gregg v. Georgia · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Irvin v. Dowd
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 137 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e offer this parenthetical comment upon the general problems involved in Witherspoon questions. First, it should be noted that prospective jurors rarely come into court with precisely defined opinions relative to the death penalty. Instead, most carry with them contradictions arising from a deep-seated human need to avenge outrageous cruelty, a quasi-religious tendency toward forgiveness, and a sense of the worth of every human life. Few have been called upon to formulate and express their thoughts with any degree of clarity or precision. In reality, then, voir dire becomes an exercise in the shaping of opinions, more so than their expression. Again and again, the record in death cases will contain answers which are ambiguous, equivocal, and contradictory. That is not because the juror is attempting to dissimulate, but because he never before has been required to formulate and express, with solemnity and finality, a viewpoint on one of the most controversial issues in modern American culture. The fact that a juror may arrive at a posture which varies from his initial expressions should be understood as exactly what it isa final distillation, after substantial questioning by contending counsel and often by the judge, of theretofore unarticulated, amorphous, and casual thoughts upon capital punishment.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Greene v. State · Willis v. State“[A] prosecutor [is] entitled ... to respond to points made in-and issues omitted from-the defendant's closing argument.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The defendant may be found "guilty but mentally retarded" if the jury, or court acting as trier of facts, finds beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of the crime charged and is mentally retarded.... [1] [Emphasis supplied.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Zant v. Foster
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.