Mitchell Warden v. Esparza’s Empirical Analysis
2003
Citation profile
443 federal appellate · 48 district · 35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,010 later decisions (13 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Rompilla v. Beard (2005), Fry v. Pliler (2007)
443 federal appellate · 48 district · 35 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedEsparza v. Mitchell (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Apprendi v. New Jersey · Chapman v. State of California · Williams v. Taylor · Delaware v. Van Arsdall · Arizona v. Fulminante
Cited together with Williams v. Taylor · Strickland v. Washington · Brecht v. Abrahamson · Lockyer Attorney General of California v. Andrade · Wiggins v. Smith, Warden
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 1,010 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or (2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Michael v. Crosby · Cagle v. Norris“[A] state court need not even be aware of our precedents, so long as neither the reasoning nor the result of the state-court decision contradicts them.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[w]e may not grant [a] habeas petition ... if the state court simply erred in concluding that the State's errors were harmless; rather, habeas relief is appropriate only if the [state court] applied harmless-error review in an `objectively unreasonable' manner.”
6 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.