Proffitt v. Florida’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
489 federal appellate · 45 district · 1,894 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,152 later decisions (209 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2022 · most notably Gregg v. Georgia (1976), Lockett v. Ohio (1978)
489 federal appellate · 45 district · 1,894 state decisions — followed in 41 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.
Relationships
Relies on Gregg v. Georgia · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Furman v. Georgia · Roberts v. Louisiana
Cited together with Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Lockett v. Ohio · Jurek v. Texas · Woodson v. North Carolina
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 3,152 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim.”
152 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“[T]he capital felony was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, in that, after initially shooting the victim and while the victim lay helplessly bleeding on the floor, the defendant deliberately leaned over the counter and shot the victim in the head.”
50 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Penry v. Lynaugh · Parker v. Dugger“[T]here shall be an informed, focused, guided, and objective inquiry into the question whether [a convicted person] should be sentenced to death.”
28 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.