Booth v. Maryland’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
366 federal appellate · 32 district · 1,564 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,336 later decisions (73 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Schlup v. Delo (1995), Lockhart v. Fretwell (1993)
366 federal appellate · 32 district · 1,564 state decisions — followed in 40 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. A case is still cited after being overruled — to note the reversal, distinguish it, or in dissent. 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 · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Furman v. Georgia · Eddings v. Oklahoma · Woodson v. North Carolina
Cited together with Payne v. Tennessee · Strickland v. Washington · South Carolina v. Gathers · Lockett v. Ohio · 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 2,336 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'victim impact' evidence relating to the personal characteristics of the victim and the emotional impact of the crimes on the victim's family.”
37 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the formal presentation of this information by the State can serve no other purpose than to inflame the jury and divert it from deciding the case on the relevant evidence concerning the crime and the defendant.”
35 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[a]llowing the jury to rely on [this information] . . . could result in imposing the death sentence because of factors about which the defendant was unaware, and that were irrelevant to the decision to kill.”
17 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.