Stokes v. Armontrout’s Empirical Analysis
893 F.2d 152 · 1989
Citation profile
23 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2006 · most notably Sawyer v. Whitley (1992), Delo v. Stokes (1990)
23 federal appellate ·
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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Barker v. Wingo · Wainwright v. Sykes · Murray v. Carrier · Lockett v. Ohio
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he tools with which to make a Mills argument were available in [1979], when this case was tried.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“if the jury had been told, in compliance with Mills , that any mitigating circumstance, even if not unanimously found by the jury, could be weighed, would it probably have fixed the punishment at life in prison?”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“If you decide that a sufficient aggravating circumstance or circumstances exist to warrant the imposition of death, as submitted in Instruction No. 26, it will then become your duty to determine whether a sufficient mitigating circumstance or circumstances exist which outweigh such aggravating circumstance or circumstances so found to exist. In deciding that question you may consider all of the evidence relating to the murder of Mary Luella Watters. You may also consider whether the capacity of the defendant to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law was substantially impaired. You may also consider any circumstances which you find from the evidence in extenuation or mitigation of punishment. If you unanimously decide that a sufficient mitigating circumstance or circumstances exist which outweigh the aggravating circumstance or circumstances found by you to exist, then you must return a verdict fixing defendant’s punishment at imprisonment for life by the Division of Corrections without eligibility for probation or parole until he has served a minimum of fifty years of his sentence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Gilmore v. Delo
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.