43 Cal. 3d 1168 - People v. Gates’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 186 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 201 later decisions — most recently November 2020 · most notably 53 Cal. 3d 771 - People v. Cooper (1991), 47 Cal. 3d 1194 - People v. Johnson (1989)
6 federal appellate · 186 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 Lockett v. Ohio · Eddings v. Oklahoma · Skipper v. South Carolina · Hitchcock v. Dugger · 40 Cal. 3d 512 - People v. Brown
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 201 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“So that you will have no misunderstandings relating to a sentence of life without possibility of parole, you have been informed generally as to the Governor's commutation modification power. You are now instructed, however, that the matter of a Governor's commutation power is not to be considered by you in determining the punishment for this defendant. [¶] You may not speculate as to if or when a Governor would commute the sentence to a lesser one which includes the possibility of parole. [¶] (18) (See fn. 26.), (17b) I instruct you again that you are to consider only those aggravating and mitigating factors which I have already read to you in determining which punishment shall be imposed on this defendant.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.