486 So. 2d 458 - Berard v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently August 2014
13 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 Witherspoon v. Illinois · Furman v. Georgia · Lockett v. Ohio · Eddings v. Oklahoma · Woodson v. North Carolina
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"The fact that a killing is `unnecessary' cannot be used as an aggravating circumstance, Lewis v. State, 380 So.2d 970 , 971 (Ala.Cr.App. 1979). `In the sense that all killings are "unnecessary", that term hardly defines the term "especially heinous, atrocious and cruel.". . . That the killing was "unnecessary" can likewise not be used as an aggravating circumstance as it is not listed as such in § 13-11-6.' Colley v. State, 405 So.2d 374 , 389 (Ala.Cr.App. 1979), reversed on other grounds, 405 So.2d 391 (Ala. 1981)."”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“especially atrocious inasmuch as it was senseless and committed for no apparent reason.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“this Court has clearly expressed its disapproval of a sentence to death in this case.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.