Gardner v. Florida’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
928 federal appellate · 113 district · 1,502 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,472 later decisions (190 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2024 · most notably Strickland v. Washington (1984), Lockett v. Ohio (1978)
928 federal appellate · 113 district · 1,502 state decisions — followed in 46 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 Boykin v. Alabama · Morrissey v. Brewer · Gregg v. Georgia · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Furman v. Georgia
Cited together with Lockett v. Ohio · Strickland v. Washington · Gregg v. Georgia · Woodson v. North Carolina · Furman v. Georgia
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 3,472 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is of vital importance to the defendant and to the community that any decision to impose the death sentence be, and appear to be, based on reason rather than caprice or emotion.”
152 later decisions quote this exact passage“on the basis of information which he had no opportunity to deny or explain.”
38 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“Death, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two. Because of that qualitative difference, there is a corresponding difference in the need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case.”
18 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.