112 Ill. 2d 396 - People v. Spears’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
86 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 87 later decisions — most recently February 2026 · most notably 123 Ill. 2d 113 - People v. Harris (1988), 132 Ill. 2d 399 - People v. Lucas (1989)
86 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 46 Ill. 2d 348 - The People v. Hairston · 106 Ill. 2d 186 - People v. Hoffer · 108 Ill. 2d 54 - People v. Almo · 39 Ill. 2d 346 - The People v. Caldwell · 99 Ill. 2d 193 - People v. Frias
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 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"`The trial court's failure to send the jury back for further deliberations to resolve the inconsistent verdicts mandates a reversal and a new trial on all the inconsistent verdicts. . . .'"”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Chyung · Carter v. State““It would be manifestly unfair to allow the State, with the benefit of hindsight, to be able to create separable acts on appeal, neither alleged nor proved at trial. Such an inquiry does not operate in a vacuum. The manner by which a defendant is charged and the jury is instructed, provides the essential framework for analyzing the consistency of jury verdicts in the troublesome context of multiple shots or victims. We believe that the substance of the allegations charging the defendant, as an unequivocal expression of prosecutorial intent [citation], and what the evidence showed in relation to those charges, are of particular importance in determining whether guilty verdicts could rationally and consistently be based upon separable acts accompanied by the requisite mental states.” Spears, 112 Ill. 2d at 405-06 , 493 N.E.2d 1034 .”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“he consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that * * * a result will follow.”
2 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.