Heiney v. Florida’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
61 federal appellate · 2 district · 288 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 400 later decisions (11 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2017 · most notably Lockhart v. McCree (1986), 559 So. 2d 187 - State v. Law (1989)
61 federal appellate · 2 district · 288 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.
Relationships
Relies on Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Lockett v. Ohio · Eddings v. Oklahoma · Spaziano v. Florida
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 400 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“There is certainly nothing irrational— indeed, there is nothing novel — about the idea of mitigating a death sentence because of lingering doubts as to guilt. It has often been noted that one of the most fearful aspects of the death penalty is its finality. There is simply no possibility of correcting a mistake. The horror of sending an innocent defendant to death is thus qualitatively different from the horror of falsely imprisoning that defendant. The belief that such an ultimate and final penalty is inappropriate where there are doubts as to guilt, even if they do not rise to the level necessary for acquittal, is a feeling that stems from common sense and fundamental notions of justice.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“although the evidence suffices to sustain the verdict, it does not foreclose all doubt respecting the defendant's guilt.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Burr v. Florida
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.