State v. Lawson’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 193 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 204 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably State v. Benson (1988), State v. Young (1985)
3 federal appellate · 193 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 · Woodson v. North Carolina · Oyler v. Boles · Proffitt v. Florida · Lehman Bros. v. Lilly
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 204 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“If, after making such a comparison, we find that juries have consistently been returning death sentences in the similar cases, then we will have a strong basis for concluding that a death sentence in the case under review is not excessive or disproportionate. On the other hand if we find that juries have consistently been returning life sentences in the similar cases, we will have a strong basis for concluding that a death sentence in the case under review is excessive or disproportionate.”
31 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Lloyd · State v. Young“all cases arising since the effective date of our capital punishment statute, 1 June 1977, which have been tried as capital cases and reviewed on direct appeal by this Court and in which the jury recommended death or life imprisonment or in which the trial court imposed life imprisonment after the jury's failure to agree upon a sentencing recommendation within a reasonable period of time.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Ward · State v. Jennings“[T]here [must] be a showing that the selection was deliberately based upon `an unjustifiable standard such as race, religion or other arbitrary classification.'”
4 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Ward · State v. King
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.