Sumner v. Shuman’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
123 federal appellate · 9 district · 164 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 387 later decisions (35 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2023 · most notably Harmelin v. Michigan (1991), Atkins v. Virginia (2002)
123 federal appellate · 9 district · 164 state decisions — followed in 26 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
reviewedShuman v. Wolff (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Lockett v. Ohio · Williams v. People of State of New York · Eddings v. Oklahoma
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 387 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death,”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Arnold v. State · Walton v. Arizona“[a] process that accords no significance to relevant facets of the character and record of the individual offender or the circumstances of the particular offense excludes from consideration in fixing the ultimate punishment of death the possibility of compassionate or mitigating factors stemming from the diverse frailties of humankind.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[p]ast convictions of other criminal offenses can be considered as a valid aggravating factor in determining whether a defendant deserves to be sentenced to death for a later murder,”
4 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.