McFarland v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 1 district · 305 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 318 later decisions — most recently February 2022 · most notably Thompson v. State (1999), King v. State (1997)
6 federal appellate · 1 district · 305 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 Strickland v. Washington · Jackson v. Virginia · Brady v. State of Maryland · United States v. Bagley · Gregg 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 318 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a particular decision not to investigate must be directly assessed for reasonableness in all the circumstances, applying a heavy measure of deference to counsel's judgments.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Donald v. State · Martin v. State“Whether, taking into consideration all of the evidence, including the circumstances of the offense, the defendant’s character and background, and the personal moral culpability of the defendant, there is a sufficient mitigating circumstance or circumstances to warrant that a sentence of life imprisonment rather than a death sentence be imposed.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[A]ny allegation of ineffectiveness must be firmly founded in the record, and the record must affirmatively demonstrate the alleged ineffectiveness.”
3 later decisions 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.