Williamson v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently February 2007 · most notably Coles v. State (1981), State v. Chaney (2003)
31 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 Lee v. State · State v. Hepple · Saltzgaver v. Saltzgaver · Schneider v. Hawkins · State v. Williamson
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[The Court]: As far as the murder conviction is concerned, there’s no choice. She gets life. [Defense Counsel]: No, Your Honor. There is a choice. You can suspend part of it. I brought the Wooten case with me. 4 [The Court]: I understand that, and I completely disagree . with Judge Raine and the Court of Appeals. I think the Legislature said when a person kills somebody else or causes them to be killed, it’s life. So as far as I am concerned, the sentence on the murder charge is life ... [Defense Counsel]: I was going to comment to the Court on the Wooten case, but I guess I won’t do that either. [The Court]: No. I have very strong feelings about that.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he essence of discretionary power in a trial court is `that the judgment and discretion must be exercised in solving the exact problem of the law, upon all the considerations which properly enter into the problem, and form it. '”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.