Johnson v. Mississippi’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
461 federal appellate · 61 district · 368 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,380 later decisions (32 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Harris v. Reed (1989), Herrera v. Collins (1993)
461 federal appellate · 61 district · 368 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.
Relationships
Relies on Gregg v. Georgia · United States v. Tucker · Woodson v. North Carolina · Zant v. Stephens · Gardner v. Florida
Cited together with Strickland v. Washington · Coleman v. Thompson · Harris v. Reed · Murray v. Carrier · Wainwright v. Sykes
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 1,380 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment.”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] state procedural ground is not `adequate' unless the procedural rule is `strictly or regularly followed.'”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“predicated on mere `caprice' or on `factors that are constitutionally impermissible or totally irrelevant to the sentencing process'”
7 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.