49 Cal. 3d 991 - People v. Lang’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 419 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 435 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2022 · most notably 1 Cal. 4th 324 - People v. Price (1991), Deboue v. Louisiana (1990)
3 federal appellate · 419 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Strickland v. Washington · Faretta v. California · Lockett v. Ohio · Caldwell v. Mississippi · Snyder v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts
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 435 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] verdict is constitutionally reliable `when the prosecution has discharged its burden of proof at the guilt and penalty phases pursuant to the rules of evidence and within the guidelines of a constitutional death penalty statute, the death verdict has been returned under proper instructions and procedures, and the trier of penalty has duly considered the relevant mitigating evidence, if any, which the defendant has chosen to present.'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“"To require defense counsel to present mitigating evidence over the defendant's objection would be inconsistent with an attorney's paramount duty of loyalty to the client and would undermine the trust, essential for effective representation, existing between attorney and client. Moreover, imposing such a duty could cause some defendants who otherwise would not have done so to exercise their Sixth Amendment right of self-representation."”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“A party may not complain on appeal that an instruction correct in law and responsive to the evidence was too general or incomplete unless the party has requested appropriate clarifying or amplifying language.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.