50 Cal. 3d 1158 - People v. Ramirez’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 142 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 157 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2018 · most notably 1 Cal. 4th 495 - People v. Kelly (1992), 2 Cal. 4th 629 - People v. Clair (1992)
10 federal appellate · 142 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 Strickland v. Washington · Jackson v. Virginia · Boykin v. Alabama · 26 Cal. 3d 557 - People v. Johnson · California v. Brown
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 157 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In accord with the general CALJIC instructions, the trial court instructed the jury that rape and sodomy are general intent crimes, but that rape-felony-murder requires a finding that defendant had the specific intent to commit rape. Although defendant does not contend that the instructions erroneously stated the applicable legal principles, he maintains that the combination of general and specific intent elements could only have been confusing to the jury, requiring `proof of contradictory mental states.' The Attorney General responds that the instructions were not misleading and did not require proof of contradictory mental states, but rather accurately set forth the different elements of the separate crimes with which defendant was charged. [¶] The Attorney General's position is well taken. The instructions did not require proof of contradictory mental states. Under the instructions, if the jury found that defendant did not act with the specific intent to rape, it could have found him guilty of rape but not of rape-felony-murder. If the jury found that defendant did act with the specific intent to rape, it could have found him guilty of both rape and rape-felony-murder. There was no inconsistency in the instructions.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“When a witness does 'not testify generally to defendant's good character or to his general reputation for lawful behaviors, but instead testifie[s] only to a number of adverse circumstances that defendant experienced in his early childhood,' it is error to 'permit[ ] the prosecution to go beyond these aspects of defendant's background and to introduce evidence of a course of misconduct that defendant had engaged in throughout his teenage years that did not relate to the mitigating evidence presented on direct examination.' [Citations.]”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“'devout Buddhist' " opened the door to inquiry on prior convictions].) Additionally, Lopez introduced testimony from a mental health expert regarding his low IQ. He did not object when the prosecutor asked the expert if such a person could be capable of committing welfare fraud. The expert acknowledged that a person with Lopez's IQ could lie. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the prosecution to introduce the welfare fraud evidence to rebut Lopez's character evidence. IV. OTHER ISSUES A. Challenges to the Death Penalty Lopez mounts a number of challenges to California's death penalty law that our prior decisions have considered and rejected. He provides no persuasive reason for us to reexamine the following conclusions: "California's death penalty law 'adequately narrows the class of murderers subject to the death penalty' and does not violate the Eighth Amendment. [Citation.] Section 190.2, which sets forth the circumstances in which the penalty of death may be imposed, is not impermissibly broad in violation of the Eighth Amendment.”
1 later decision 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.