State v. Barfield’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
12 federal appellate · 365 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 386 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2015 · most notably State v. Jackson (1983), State v. Rogers (1986)
12 federal appellate · 365 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 · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Furman v. Georgia · Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. · Jurek v. Texas
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 386 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a]s a check against the capricious or random imposition of the death penalty.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. State v. DeCastro · State v. Smith“Sentencing standards are by necessity somewhat general. While they must be particular enough to afford fair warning to a defendant of the probable penalty which would attach upon a finding of guilt, they must also be general enough to allow the courts to respond to the various mutations of conduct which society has judged to warrant the application of the criminal sanction. [Citation omitted.] While the questions which these sentencing standards require juries to answer are difficult, they do not require the jury to do substantially more than is ordinarily required of a fact finder in any lawsuit. [Citation omitted.] The issues which are posed to a jury at the sentencing phase of North Carolina’s bifurcated proceeding have a common sense core of meaning. Jurors who are sitting in a criminal trial ought to be capable of understanding them and applying them when they are given appropriate instructions by the trial court judge. [Citation omitted.]”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. State v. Rook · State v. Williams“A mere similarity in results is not a sufficient basis upon which to receive evidence of other offenses. Instead, there must be such a concurrence of common features that the assorted offenses are naturally explained as being caused by a general plan.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Stager · State v. Dixon
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.