State v. Adkins’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
22 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 23 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2019
22 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 Barker v. Wingo · Wainwright v. Witt · Rheuark v. Shaw · State v. Dicks · Cozzolino v. State
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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Defendant contends that the Tennessee Death Penalty Statute is unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishment. We rejected that contention in State v. Dicks, 615 S.W.2d 126 (Tenn.1981), and a number of later cases. Defendant also says that the use of electrocution, when there are more humane forms of legal killing, such as lethal injection, violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The validity and humanity of that complaint should be addressed to the Legislature. This Court’s authority over punishment for crime ends with the adjudication of constitutionality.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Black · State v. Barber“It is elementary that the issue of guilt or innocence in a capital case requires a full scale trial and cannot be an adjunct of a resentencing hearing. There are procedures, too well known to require discussion, for obtaining a retrial of guilt or innocence in a capital case; but that issue is not available at a resentencing hearing.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Teague
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.