State v. Ferguson’s Empirical Analysis
1999
Citation profile
25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 27 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2020 · most notably Illinois v. Fisher (2004), Cost v. State (2010)
25 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 Brady v. State of Maryland · United States v. Agurs · California v. Trombetta · Arizona v. Youngblood · Betts v. Brady
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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Whatever duty the Constitution imposes on the States to preserve evidence, that duty must be limited to evidence that might be expected to play a significant role in the suspect’s defense. To meet this standard of constitutional materiality, evidence must both possess an exculpatory value that was apparent before the evidence was destroyed, and be of such a nature that the defendant would be unable to obtain comparable evidence by other reasonably available means.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“1. The degree of negligence involved; 2. The significance of the destroyed evidence, considered in light of the probative value and reliability of secondary or substitute evidence that remains available; and 3. The sufficiency of the other evidence used at trial to support the conviction.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. State v. Gilley · State v. Coulter“permits no consideration of the materiality of the missing evidence, or its effect on the defendant's case.... [It] substantially increases the defendant's burden, while reducing the prosecution's burden at the expense of the defendant's fundamental right to a fair trial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Pena v. State
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.