Bullington v. Missouri’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
283 federal appellate · 15 district · 917 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,545 later decisions (79 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2023 · most notably Strickland v. Washington (1984), Monge v. California (1998)
283 federal appellate · 15 district · 917 state decisions — followed in 42 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 Jackson v. Virginia · In the Matter of Samuel Winship · North Carolina v. Pearce · Gregg v. Georgia · Burks v. United States
Cited together with Burks v. United States · Arizona v. Rumsey · North Carolina v. Pearce · United States v. DiFrancesco · Poland v. Arizona
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 1,545 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence.”
32 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““the law attaches particular significance to an acquittal. To permit a second trial after an acquittal, however mistaken the acquittal may have been, would present an unacceptably high risk that the Government, with its vastly superior resources, might wear down the defendant so that ‘even though innocent, he may be found guilty.’ ””
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“inapplicable whenever a jury agrees or an appellate court decides that the prosecution has not proved its case.”
15 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.