Clark v. Florida

Decided May 21, 1984

Supreme Court of the United States · decided 1984-05-21

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Cartwright v. Maynard

Relies on Gregg v. Georgia · 443 So. 2d 973 - Clark v. State · State v. Cone

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1984-05-21

How this case has been cited

Cited by 257 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2012 · most notably Bell Warden v. Cone (2002), Coe v. Bell (1998)

123 federal appellate · 35 district · 50 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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Sup. Ct. Fla.;

¶2Ct. Crim. App. Okla.;

¶3Sup. Ct. Tenn.;

¶4C. A. 4th Cir.; and

¶5Sup. Ct. Mo. Certiorari denied. Reported below: No. 83-6421, 443 So. 2d 973; No. 83-6490, 665 S. W. 2d 87; No. 83-6610, 719 F. 2d 58; No. 83-6625, 661 S. W. 2d 526.

Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall,

¶6dissenting.

¶7Adhering to our views that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 227, 231 (1976), we would grant certiorari and vacate the death sentences in these cases.