Eddings v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 1 district · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 51 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2010 · most notably Eddings v. Oklahoma (1982), Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988)
8 federal appellate · 1 district · 37 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 Brady v. State of Maryland · United States v. Agurs · Gregg v. Georgia · Gault · Furman 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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he aggravating circumstance in the statute is for murders that are especially heinous, atrocious and cruel, and obviously the Legislature must have intended to reach killings which are 'out of the ordinary.' " Id. at 1167 (emphasis original). The court then quoted the following passage from the narrowing construction of the Florida court that the Supreme Court had approved in Proffitt: 46 "[W]e feel that the meaning of such terms is a matter of common knowledge, so that an ordinary man would not have to guess at what was intended. It is our interpretation that heinous means extremely wicked or shockingly evil; that atrocious means outrageously wicked and vile; and, that cruel means designed to inflict a high degree of pain with utter indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering of others. What is intended to be included are those capital crimes where the actual commission of the capital felony was accompanied by such additional acts as to set the crime apart from the norm of capital felonies--the conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Nuckols v. State · Burrows v. State“With regard to the sentence, the court shall determine: 1. Whether the sentence of death was imposed under the influence of passion, prejudice, or any arbitrary factor; 2. Whether the evidence supports the jury’s or judge’s finding of a statutory aggravating circumstance as enumerated in this act; and 3.Whether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the crime and the defendant. 21 O.S.Supp.1980, § 701.13(C).”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Jones v. State“family history is useful in explaining why he behaved the way he did, . . . it does not excuse his behavior. " Id. , at 1170 (emphasis added). From this the Court concludes that "the Court of Criminal Appeals also considered only that evidence to be mitigating which would tend to support a legal excuse from criminal liability.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Eddings v. Oklahoma
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.