Head v. Hill’s Empirical Analysis
2003
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 96 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 119 later decisions — most recently June 2021 · most notably State v. Were (2008), State v. Frazier (2007)
17 federal appellate · 96 state decisions — followed in 12 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.
Relationships
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Apprendi v. New Jersey · Batson v. Kentucky · Teague v. Lane · Ring v. Arizona
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 119 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] higher standard of proof serves to enforce the General Assembly’s chosen definition of what degree of impairment qualifies as mentally retarded under Georgia law for the purpose of fixing the appropriate criminal penalty that persons of varying mental impairment should bear for their capital crimes .... [T]he Court in Atkins recognized that, despite a “national consensus” against executing mentally retarded persons, there might be “serious disagreement ... in determining which offenders are in fact retarded.” In view of the lack of national consensus as to which mentally impaired persons are constitutionally entitled to an exemption from death sentences, we conclude that the Georgia General Assembly ... was originally and remains within constitutional bounds in establishing a procedure for considering alleged mental retardation that limits the exemption to those whose mental deficiencies are significant enough to be provable beyond a reasonable doubt.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[T]he absence of mental retardation is not the functional equivalent of an element of an offense such that determining its absence or presence requires a jury trial under Ring .”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. State v. Laney · People v. Skinner“As was our approach in Ford v. Wain-might, 477 U.S. 399 , 106 S.Ct. 2595 , 91 L.Ed.2d 335 (1986), with regard to insanity, we leave to the States the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon their execution of sentences.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.