Maynard v. Cartwright’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
644 federal appellate · 103 district · 1,104 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,500 later decisions (59 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Ring v. Arizona (2002), Walton v. Arizona (1990)
644 federal appellate · 103 district · 1,104 state decisions — followed in 43 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
reviewedCartwright v. Maynard (from Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Proffitt v. Florida · Godfrey v. Georgia
Cited together with Godfrey v. Georgia · Strickland v. Washington · Clemons v. Mississippi · Zant v. Stephens · Lockett v. Ohio
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 2,500 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel,”
95 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Graham v. Collins · Payne v. Bell“Vagueness challenges to statutes not threatening First Amendment interests are examined in light of the facts of the case at hand; the statute is judged on an as-applied basis.”
28 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he channeling and limiting of the sentencer's discretion in imposing the death penalty is a fundamental constitutional requirement for sufficiently minimizing the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.”
27 later decisions 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.