195 Ill. 2d 179 - People v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
2000
Citation profile
140 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 151 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably 241 Ill. 2d 319 - People v. Manning (2011), 399 Ill. App. 3d 341 - People v. Jones (2010)
140 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 · Morgan v. Illinois · 183 Ill. 2d 366 - People v. Coleman · 186 Ill. 2d 83 - People v. Evans · 189 Ill. 2d 99 - People v. Blue
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 151 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"`[A] defendant must show that his counsel's performance was so inadequate that counsel was not functioning as the "counsel" guaranteed by the sixth amendment. Counsel's performance is measured by an objective standard of competence under prevailing professional norms. Further, in order to establish deficient performance, the defendant must overcome the strong presumption that the challenged action or inaction may have been the product of sound trial strategy. [Citations.] Matters of trial strategy are generally immune from claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. [Citation.]'" Id. at 326-27, 350 Ill.Dec. 262 , 948 N.E.2d 542 (quoting People v. Smith, 195 Ill.2d 179, 188 , 253 Ill.Dec. 660 , 745 N.E.2d 1194 (2000)).”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. People v. Joiner · People v. Guja“Appellate counsel is not obligated to brief every conceivable issue on appeal, and it is not incompetence of counsel to refrain from raising issues which, in his or her judgment, are without merit, unless counsel's appraisal of the merits is patently wrong. Accordingly, unless the underlying issues are meritorious, defendant has suffered no prejudice from counsel's failure to raise them on appeal.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] reasonable probability that the result would have been different is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome—or put another way, that counsel's deficient performance 28 No. 1-13-1144 rendered the result of the trial unreliable or fundamentally unfair.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. People v. Carlisle
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.