Andres v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
333 U.S. 740 · 1948
Citation profile
360 federal appellate · 13 district · 190 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 706 later decisions (60 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Furman v. Georgia (1972), Duncan v. State of Louisiana (1968)
360 federal appellate · 13 district · 190 state decisions — followed in 31 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedAndres v. United States (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 542
Relies on Winston v. United States · State v. Henry · American Publishing Co. v. Fisher · Ruhl v. United States
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 706 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“That reasonable men might derive a meaning from the instructions given other than the proper meaning of [the statute] is probable. In death cases doubts such as those presented here should be resolved in favor of the accused.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“consonant with the general humanitarian purpose of the statute.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Klinge · People v. Green““The act of Congress confers this right upon the jury, in broad and unlimited terms, by enacting that, ‘in all cases in which the accused is found guilty of the crime of murder,’ ‘the jury may qualify their verdict by adding thereto “without capital punishment,”' and that, ‘whenever the jury shall return a verdict qualified as aforesaid’ the sentence shall be to imprisonment at hard labor for life. “The right to qualify a verdict of guilty by adding the words ‘without capital punishment’ is thus conferred upon the jury in all cases of murder. The act does not itself prescribe, nor authorize the court to prescribe, any rule defining or circumscribing the exercise of this right, but commits the whole matter of its exercise to the judgment and the consciences of the jury. The authority of the jury to decide that the accused shall not be punished capitally is not limited to cases in which the court or the jury is of opinion that there are palliating or mitigating circumstances. But it extends to every case in which, upon a view of the whole evidence, the jury is of opinion that it would not be just or wise to impose capital punishment. How far considerations of age, sex, ignorance, illness, or intoxication, of human passion or weakness, of sympathy or clemency, or the irrevocableness of an executed sentence of death, or an apprehension that explanatory facts may exist which have not been brought to light, or any other consideration whatever, should be allowed weight in deciding t”
5 later decisions 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.