Williams v. Calderon’s Empirical Analysis
52 F.3d 1465 · 1995
Citation profile
82 federal appellate · 6 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 146 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2021 · most notably Bonin v. Calderon (1995), Brown v. Sanders (2006)
82 federal appellate · 6 district · 6 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Chapman v. State of California · Kotteakos v. United States · United States v. Agurs · Gregg v. Georgia
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 146 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A habeas petitioner is entitled to an evidentiary hearing on a claim if (1) the petitioner's allegations, if proved, would entitle him to relief, and (2) the state court trier of fact has not, after a full and fair hearing, reliably found the relevant facts.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Mullins · Smith v. State“Instead, the distinction can be understood functionally in one of two ways. First, when a jury "is specifically instructed to weigh statutory aggravating and mitigating cireumstances," and its decision is tied to the outcome, the decisional process necessarily becomes infected by the improper consideration. In states where no such procedure is mandated, the factor need not infect the process; the jury is under no obligation to weigh the factor as part of its caleulus. Second, when a jury is limited to the consideration of discrete aggravating factors, consideration of an invalid factor may allow consideration of something-the cireumstances supporting the factor-that could not have otherwise been considered. In contrast, when a jury is permitted to consider any evidence it deems relevant in aggravation, the consideration of an invalid factor adds only an improper label-the state's "aggravating factor" imprimatur-to underlying cireumstances which could have been taken into account anyway. Consequently, the Supreme Court's weighing/ nonweighing distinction may involve both procedural and substantive components. Procedurally, is the sentencer restricted to a "weighing" of aggravation against mitigation? Substantively, is the sentencer prevented from considering evidence in aggravation other than discrete, statutorily-defined factors? Our review of federal and state court decisions reveals that where both constraints are present, the regimes involved are uniformly treated as weigh”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Brown v. Sanders · Olsen v. State“[W]hen the sentencing body is told to weigh an invalid factor in its decision, a reviewing court may not assume it would have made no difference if the thumb had been removed from death's side of the scale”
2 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.