Boulden v. Holman’s Empirical Analysis
1969
Citation profile
152 federal appellate · 27 district · 587 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 919 later decisions (46 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2022 · most notably Neil v. Biggers (1972), Lockett v. Ohio (1978)
152 federal appellate · 27 district · 587 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
reviewedBoulden v. Holman (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Escobedo v. Illinois · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Johnson v. State of New Jersey · Spano v. People of the State of New York
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 919 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[i]t is entirely possible that a person who has ‘a fixed opinion against’ or who does not ‘believe in’ capital punishment might nevertheless be perfectly able as a juror to abide by existing law — to follow conscientiously the instructions of a trial judge and to consider fairly the imposition of the death sentence in a particular case.””
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a sentence of death cannot be carried out if the jury that imposed or recommended it was chosen by excluding veniremen for cause simply because they voiced general objections to the death penalty or expressed conscientious or religious scruples against its infliction.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Liddell v. State · Hovila v. State““Unless a venireman states unambiguously that he would automatically vote against the imposition of capital punishment no matter what the trial might reveal, it simply cannot be assumed that that is his position.””
14 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.