Stephens v. Zant’s Empirical Analysis
631 F.2d 397 · 1980
Citation profile
49 federal appellate · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 108 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2006 · most notably Zant v. Stephens (1983), 1 Cal. 4th 1132 - People v. Howard (1992)
49 federal appellate · 23 state decisions — followed in 13 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Relies on Blockburger v. United States · Gregg v. Georgia · Witherspoon v. Illinois · Furman v. Georgia · Brown v. Ohio
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 108 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“determine with the degree of certainty required in capital cases that the (improper) evidence ..., together with the instruction, did not make a critical difference in the jury's decision to impose the death penalty,”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Stephens v. Zant · Blake v. Zant“impossible for a reviewing court to determine satisfactorily that the verdict in this case was not decisively affected by an unconstitutional statutory aggravating circumstance.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Zant v. Stephens · Zant v. Stephens“The presence of the unconstitutionally vague circumstance also made it possible for the jury to consider several prior convictions of petitioner which otherwise would not have been before it.”
4 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.