Whitaker v. Warden’s Empirical Analysis
1966
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 1 district · 4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently March 1994
9 federal appellate · 1 district · 4 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 Glasser v. United States · Murphy v. State · Sawyer v. Brough · Farrell v. State
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Moreover, we think that there can be no doubt that evidence of promiscuous sexual misbehavior on the part of the victim would have been relevant to a determination of the proper sentence to be imposed. While the crime is revolting and reprehensible under any circumstances, it might be considered less so if the girl involved was not an innocent child, but rather one who was sexually wise and experienced far beyond her years. In the instant case, Whitaker desperately needed the benefit which might derive from the dis closure of any mitigating factors. His crime was aggravated by the tender age and her familial relationship with him. Yet, counsel appears to have made no attempt whatsoever, to apprise the court of the girl’s background, which his testimony strongly indicates he knew to be bad. Had he brought this information to the court’s attention, Whitaker’s punishment might have been less severe.”
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.