Davis v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
13 federal appellate · 60 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 79 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably McDougall v. North Carolina (1983), State v. DiFrisco (1994)
13 federal appellate · 60 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 Chapman v. State of California · Boykin v. Alabama · In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Gregg v. Georgia · Witherspoon v. Illinois
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 79 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(BY THE STATE) Q: ... In a case where the law and the evidence warranted it, in a proper case, could you, m'am [sic], without doing violence to your conscience, agree to a verdict imposing the death penalty? (BY JUROR STEPHENS) A. I cannot. Q. All right. Then I need to ask you another question: If you found beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty of Murder in the First Degree, and if under the evidence, facts and circumstances of the case the law would permit you to consider a sentence of death, are your personal reservations about the death penalty such that regardless of the law, the facts and the circumstances of a case that you, as a person, would not inflict the death penalty? A: No. I can't; I won't. I am sorry. Q: You won't? A. No.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Davis v. Maynard · Castro v. State“A design to effect death is inferred from the fact of killing, unless the circumstances raise a reasonable doubt whether such design existed.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.