Shaw v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis
786 F.2d 993 · 1986
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently June 2015
11 federal appellate · 1 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 Jackson v. Virginia · Chapman v. State of California · Sandstrom v. Montana · Cupp v. Naughten · Snyder v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts
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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It later developed that the trial court, as well as all of counsel, were laboring under a misapprehension as to the minimum sentence which could be imposed if the jury found that Shaw had suffered one prior felony conviction. Instead of being a twenty-year minimum, as the jury was instructed, the actual minimum then permitted by statute was ten years.... Shaw, in this federal habeas proceeding, asserts that this error in the sentencing jury instruction is constitutional error. He argues that under the circumstances, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals should have remanded the case to the trial court for a new resentencing trial where the jury would be properly instructed as to the correct minimum sentence which could be imposed, i.e., ten years and not twenty. In [this] case, it is unlikely that the sentencing error had any effect on Shaw’s sentence. The jury was instructed that the range of punishment which could be imposed was from twenty years to life. The jury rejected the argument of defense counsel that they give Shaw a twenty-year sentence, and, instead, imposed the maximum sentence allowable, i.e., life. It is pure speculation that the jury would have imposed something less than life imprisonment had it been properly instructed that the minimum possible sentence was ten years, and not twenty.... See Hill v. Estelle, 653 F.2d 202 , 205 (5th Cir.[1981]) ... (error in minimum possible sentence did not [require resentencing] when actual sentence given was large enough ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. McGee v. Higgins“independent evidence tending to support its trustworthiness....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.