People v. Bennett’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
562 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 566 later decisions — most recently April 2025 · most notably State v. Jenks (1991), Kogan v. People (1988)
562 state decisions — followed in 17 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
Relies on Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Jackson v. Denno · Griffin v. California · Holland v. United States · Curley v. United States
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 566 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“whether the relevant evidence, both direct and circumstantial, when viewed as a whole and in the light most favorable to the prosecution, is substantial and sufficient to support a conclusion by a reasonable mind that the defendant is guilty of the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.”
42 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"There are two types of evidence from which a jury may properly find the truth as to the facts of a case. One is direct evidence such as the testimony of an eyewitness. The other is indirect or circumstantial evidence, that is, the proof of facts or circumstances from which the existence or non-existence of other facts may reasonably be inferred. As a general rule, the law makes no distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence, but simply requires that, before convicting a defendant, the jury be satisfied of the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt from all the evidence in the case." (Colorado Jury Instructions, Criminal 4:1.)”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Blakely v. State · People v. Austin““affords the same status to both direct and circumstantial evidence .... In recognizing this test, we now cast aside as outmoded and as confusing the requirement that the prosecution’s evidence, when wholly circumstantial, must exclude every reasonable hypothesis other than that of guilt and no longer require such an instruction or such a test to be applied.””
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.