Vela v. Wj Estelle’s Empirical Analysis
708 F.2d 954 · 1983
Citation profile
49 federal appellate · 1 district · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 95 later decisions — most recently August 2016 · most notably United States v. Moya-Gomez (1988), Brooks v. Kemp (1985)
49 federal appellate · 1 district · 9 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. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Fay v. Noia · Cuyler v. Sullivan · McMann v. Richardson · Rose v. Lundy
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 95 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“advance[d] in federal court an argument based on a legal theory distinct from that relied upon in state court,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the only dispute ... is over those instances of alleged substandard conduct cited in this appeal,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Faced with the task of assessing Vela’s punishment, the jury was informed that the man he had killed was kind, inoffensive, a star athlete, an usher in his church, a member of his choir, a social worker with underprivileged children of all races____ The truth of these statements is, of course, not in issue; the point is that they are irrelevant to the severity of Vela’s sentence and should not have been considered by the jury.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Brooks v. Kemp
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.