Morgan v. Illinois’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
423 federal appellate · 34 district · 1,399 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,336 later decisions (9 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2025 · most notably Georgia v. McCollum (1992), State v. Treesh (2001)
423 federal appellate · 34 district · 1,399 state decisions — followed in 41 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 Witherspoon v. Illinois · Furman v. Georgia · Lockett v. Ohio · Irvin v. Dowd · Wainwright v. Witt
Cited together with Wainwright v. Witt · Strickland v. Washington · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Williams v. Taylor · Batson v. Kentucky
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 2,336 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A juror who will automatically vote for the death penalty in every case will fail in good faith to consider the evidence of aggravating and mitigating circumstances as the instructions require him to do. Indeed, because such a juror has already formed an opinion on the merits, the presence or absence of either aggravating or mitigating circumstances is entirely irrelevant to such a juror. Therefore, based on the requirement of impartiality embodied in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, a capital defendant may challenge for cause any prospective juror who maintains such views. If even one such juror is empaneled and the death sentence is imposed, the State is disentitled to execute the sentence.”
43 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“infected petitioner's capital sentencing [is] unacceptable in light of the ease with which that risk could have been minimized.”
34 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“is conducted under the supervision of the court, and a great deal must, of necessity, be left to its sound discretion.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.