Darden v. Wainwright’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
1,949 federal appellate · 201 district · 1,696 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6,204 later decisions (49 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Wiggins v. Smith, Warden (2003), Payne v. Tennessee (1991)
1,949 federal appellate · 201 district · 1,696 state decisions — followed in 43 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Chapman v. State of California · Bruton v. United States · Kotteakos v. United States · Simmons v. United States
Cited together with Strickland v. Washington · Donnelly v. DeChristoforo · Caldwell v. Mississippi · Williams v. Taylor · United States v. Young
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 6,204 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.”
164 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. DePew v. Ohio · Elbert v. M Rees“is not enough that the prosecutors' remarks were undesirable or even universally condemned.”
101 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“reduced the likelihood that the jury's decision was influenced by argument.”
37 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.