Lewis v. Jeffers’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
560 federal appellate · 151 district · 183 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,886 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Estelle v. McGuire (1991), Walton v. Arizona (1990)
560 federal appellate · 151 district · 183 state decisions — followed in 19 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
reviewedJeffers v. Ricketts (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Jackson v. Virginia · In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Gregg v. Georgia · Furman v. Georgia · Lockett v. Ohio
Cited together with Strickland v. Washington · Estelle v. McGuire · Coleman v. Thompson · Jackson v. Virginia · Williams v. Taylor
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 1,886 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[F]ederal habeas corpus relief does not lie for errors of state law.”
39 later decisions quote this exact passage“the sentencer to make a principled distinction between those who deserve the death penalty and those who do not.”
32 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Where the issue is solely whether a state court has properly found the existence of a constitutionally narrowed aggravating circumstance ... a federal court must determine ... whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the [aggravating circumstance] beyond a reasonable doubt.”
14 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.