Henry v. Wainwright’s Empirical Analysis
721 F.2d 990 · 1983
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2007 · most notably Tichnell v. Maryland (1984), Porter v. Wainwright (1986)
5 federal appellate · 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
Relies on Lockett v. Ohio · Zant v. Stephens · Enmund v. Florida · Proffitt v. Florida · Godfrey 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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To accept Henry’s argument would create an anomaly: The sentencing authority could constitutionally consider non-statutory aggravating circumstances only if the evidence supporting those circumstances had validly been admitted on some other ground. This result would contradict the clear language in Barclay that “the constitution does not prohibit consideration at the sentencing phase of information not directly related to either statutory aggravating or mitigating factors as long as that information is relevant to the character of the defendant or the circumstances of the crime.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Pruett v. Thigpen“[f]or the failure to give the instruction to be harmless, the evidence must be so overwhelming that the omission beyond a reasonable doubt did not contribute to the verdict”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.