McGurk v. Stenberg’s Empirical Analysis
163 F.3d 470 · 1998
Citation profile
36 federal appellate · 2 district · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 75 later decisions — most recently July 2025 · most notably Ernest Sutton Bell v. Mack Jarvis Robert Smith (2000), Commonwealth v. Basemore (2000)
36 federal appellate · 2 district · 26 state decisions — followed in 11 states
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 Strickland v. Washington · Chapman v. State of California · Brecht v. Abrahamson · Arizona v. Fulminante · United States v. Cronic
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 75 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a]s a practical matter, it is difficult to imagine situations that would trigger structural error analysis beyond the failure on the part of counsel to inform a defendant of certain basic rights, such as the right to trial by jury, to self-representation, or to an appeal as a matter of right.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“error rendering the trial fundamentally unfair and requiring reversal. See Beets v. Iowa Dep't of Corrections Services, 164 F.3d 1131 , 1136 (8th Cir. 1999); Rush v. Smith, 56 F.3d 918 , 927 (8th Cir. 1995); Starr v. Lockhart, 23 F.3d 1280 , 1291 (8th Cir. 1994) (holding that certain structural errors can never be harmless); see also Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 , 23-24 (1967) (stating that some errors undermine rights so basic to a fair trial that they can never be treated as harmless error). Structural errors”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“First, the defendant must show that counsel’s performance was deficient. This requires showing that counsel made errors so serious that counsel was not functioning as the “counsel” guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Second, the defendant must show that the deficient performance prejudiced the defense. This requires showing that counsel’s errors were so serious as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial, a trial whose result is reliable.”
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.