STATE EX REL. v. Hamilton’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently June 2015
11 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 Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Lockett v. Ohio · Woodson v. North Carolina · Trop v. Dulles
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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We cannot envision a murder defense, however, that would not require introduction of all possible evidence toward reduction of a jury’s view of the severity of defendant’s acts. Even when alibi is a defense, good character evidence would be appropriate. And so we cannot conceive of any fact that defendant could introduce to convince a jury that he deserves mercy at a separate sentencing stage that should not be introduced by him at the main trial, and Leach presents us with none.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““The West Virginia first-degree murder statute leaves very little sentencing discretion to juries. A finding of guilt automatically results in a life sentence and a jury’s only discretion is whether to grant parole eligibility by recommending mercy. The factors that a jury should consider in deciding whether to recommend mercy are not delineated, but these are for legislative determination.””
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.