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← 481 U.S. 393 - Hitchcock v. Dugger

Hitchcock v. Dugger’s Empirical Analysis

1987

Citation profile

1,399
cited by 1,399 later decisions
74
cited 74 times by the Supreme Court
28
states following
May 2025
most recently cited

335 federal appellate · 3 district · 686 state decisions

How this case has been cited

Cited by 1,399 later decisions (74 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Harmelin v. Michigan (1991), Penry v. Lynaugh (1989)

335 federal appellate · 3 district · 686 state decisions — followed in 28 states

617019871990200020102020decided

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

reviewedHitchcock v. Dugger (from Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)

Relationships

Relies on Lockett v. Ohio · Eddings v. Oklahoma · Mahan & Rowsey, Inc. v. Oklahoma Natural Gas · McCleskey v. Kemp · Pelaes v. United States

Cited together with Lockett v. Ohio · Eddings v. Oklahoma · Strickland v. Washington · Skipper v. South Carolina · Caldwell v. Mississippi

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 1,399 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

  1. “the advisory jury was instructed not to consider, and the sentencing judge refused to consider, evidence of nonstatutory mitigating circumstances.”
    15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
    e.g. Streetman v. Lynaugh, Director, Texas Department of Corrections · Booker v. State
  2. “[t]he mitigating circumstances which you may consider shall be the following....”
    13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
    e.g. Neal v. State · 515 So. 2d 975 - Morgan v. State
  3. “[I]n capital cases, the sentencer may not refuse to consider or be precluded from considering any relevant mitigating evidence.”
    11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
    e.g. Streetman v. Lynaugh, Director, Texas Department of Corrections · Hawkins v. Gibson

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.