283 So. 2d 1 - State v. Dixon’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
21 federal appellate · 2 district · 495 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 577 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2017 · most notably Strickland v. Washington (1984), Gregg v. Georgia (1976)
21 federal appellate · 2 district · 495 state decisions — followed in 27 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 Furman v. Georgia · Dandridge v. Williams · Mooney v. Holohan · Moore v. Illinois · McGautha v. California
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 577 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is our interpretation that heinous means extremely wicked or shockingly evil; that atrocious means outrageously wicked and vile; and, that cruel means designed to inflict a high degree of pain with utter indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering of others. What is intended to be included are those capital crimes where the actual commission of the capital felony was accompanied by such additional acts as to set the crime apart from the norm of capital felonies the conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim.”
152 later decisions quote this exact passage“especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.”
74 later decisions quote this exact passage“It must be emphasized that the procedure to be followed by the trial judges and juries is not a mere counting process of X number of aggravating circumstances and Y number of mitigating circumstances, but rather a reasoned judgment as to what factual situations require the imposition of death and which can be satisfied by life imprisonment in light of the totality of the circumstances present.”
36 later decisions 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.