48 Cal. 3d 879 - People v. Allison’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 53 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 65 later decisions — most recently August 2017 · most notably 1 Cal. 4th 1132 - People v. Howard (1992), 49 Cal. 3d 991 - People v. Lang (1989)
6 federal appellate · 53 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.
Relationships
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Eddings v. Oklahoma · Enmund v. Florida · Pulley v. Harris
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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is now your duty to determine which of the two penalties, death or confinement in the state prison for life without possibility of parole, shall be imposed on the defendant. After having heard all of the evidence and after having heard and considered the arguments of counsel, you shall consider, take into account, and be guided by the applicable factors of aggravating and mitigating circumstances upon which you have been instructed. The weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances does not mean the mere mechanical counting of factors on each side of an imaginary scale or the arbitrary assignment of weights to any of them. “You are not required to place any specific weight or numerical value on any particular aggravating or mitigating circumstance. You are free to assign whatever moral or sympathetic value you deem appropriate to each and all of the various factors you are permitted to consider. It is entirely up to you to determine whether in your independent opinion one or more factors outweigh others no matter what their number. In weighing the various circumstances, you simply determine under the relevant evidence which penalty is justified and appropriate by considering the totality of the aggravating circumstances with the totality of the mitigating circumstances. “In weighing the aggravating and mitigating factors, you are not to merely count numbers on either side. One mitigating circumstance may be sufficient to support a decision that death is not the app”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“has been repeatedly approved [in this state] as a correct statement of the law, appropriately given where there is an evidentiary basis to support it. [Citations.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“`[w]e cannot, and will not, predicate reversal of a judgment on mere speculation that some undisclosed testimony may have altered the result.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.