Lockett v. Ohio’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
2,101 federal appellate · 152 district · 4,115 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8,272 later decisions (345 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2025 · most notably Strickland v. Washington (1984), Wiggins v. Smith, Warden (2003)
2,101 federal appellate · 152 district · 4,115 state decisions — followed in 47 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 Simmons v. United States · Brady v. United States · Gregg v. Georgia · Griffin v. California · Witherspoon v. Illinois
Cited together with Eddings v. Oklahoma · 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 8,272 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death.”
508 later decisions quote this exact passage“[n]othing in this opinion limits the traditional authority of a court to exclude, as irrelevant, evidence not bearing on the defendant's character, prior record, or the circumstances of his offense.”
39 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“The limited range of mitigating circumstances which may be considered by the sentencer under the Ohio statute is incompatible with the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. To meet constitutional requirements, a death penalty statute must not preclude consideration of relevant mitigating factors.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.