Harris v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
6 district · 61 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 69 later decisions — most recently February 2017 · most notably Hunt v. State (1990), State v. Lee (1994)
6 district · 61 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 North Carolina v. Pearce · Gregg v. Georgia · Burks v. United States · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Lockett v. Ohio
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 69 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘A Defendant has a common law right of allocution, i.e., to address the sentencing body in mitigation of punishment, however, his statement in allocution is not evidence or testimony. During allocution the Defendant is not under oath, and thus not subject to the penalties of perjury and to cross-examination. “Any statement Jackie Harris makes to you should not be regarded as evidence but rather as his statement in mitigation of punishment.’ ””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Booth v. State · Hunt v. State“Maryland’s death penalty statute is structured to give very broad discretion to the sentencing authority in determining the circumstances that will be deemed relevant to the ultimate question of whether death is the appropriate penalty. We have said that “[i]f the sentencing authority perceives anything relating to the defendant or the crime which causes it to believe that death may not be appropriate, it may treat such factor as a mitigating circumstance and decide that it [is not outweighed by] the aggravating circumstances.” ... Our statute permits the sentencing authority wide discretion to decline to impose the death penalty, but at the same time, it carefully channels and directs the consideration of factors that would permit its imposition. (Citations omitted)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Bowie v. State“"(h)' Weighing mitigating and aggravating circumstances. — (1) If the court or jury finds that one or more of these mitigating circumstances exist, it shall determine whether, by a preponderance of the evidence, the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances. (2) If it finds that the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances, the sentence shall be death. (3) If it finds that the aggravating circumstances do not outweigh the mitigating circumstances, a sentence of death may not be imposed.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Evans v. State
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.