State v. Waddell’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
171 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 179 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2013 · most notably Woodson v. North Carolina (1976), State v. Barfield (1979)
171 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 Furman v. Georgia
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 179 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Upon the trial of any defendant so charged, the trial judge may not instruct the jury that it may in its discretion add to its verdict of guilty a recommendation that defendant be sentenced to life imprisonment. The trial judge should charge on the constituent elements of the offense set out in the bill of indictment and instruct the jury under what circumstances a verdict of guilty or not guilty should be returned. Upon the return of a verdict of guilty of any such offense, the court must pronounce a sentence of death. The punishment to be imposed for these capital felonies is no longer a discretionary question for the jury and therefore no longer a proper subject for an instruction by the judge.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Dillard“I do not think any death sentence may be constitutionally inflicted unless our General Assembly strikes from our present statutes the provisions which leave to the unbridled discretion of a jury whether the punishment shall be death or life imprisonment. In my opinion, this Court has no right to ignore, delete or repeal these provisions, which were put there by the General Assembly as an integral part of its plan for the punishment of crimes for which the death sentence was permissible. Furman did not repeal them. This Court has no right to repeal them.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Jarrette
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.