Zant v. Stephens’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
49 federal appellate · 3 district · 70 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 178 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2011 · most notably Zant v. Stephens (1983), Barclay v. Florida (1983)
49 federal appellate · 3 district · 70 state decisions — followed in 11 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedStephens v. Zant (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Sandstrom v. Montana · Eddings v. Oklahoma · 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 178 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“What are the premises of state law that support the conclusion that the death sentence in this case is not impaired by the invalidity of one of the statutory aggravating circumstances found by the jury?”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. State v. LaRette · Zant v. Stephens“[w]here two or more statutory aggravating circumstances are found by the jury, the failure of one circumstance does not so taint the proceedings as to invalidate the other aggravating circumstance found and the sentence based thereon.”
2 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.