Diaz v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
223 U.S. 442 · 1912
Citation profile
658 federal appellate · 48 district · 935 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,013 later decisions (65 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2025 · most notably Ashe v. Swenson (1970), Brown v. Ohio (1977)
658 federal appellate · 48 district · 935 state decisions — followed in 49 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 Weems v. United States · Reynolds v. States · Hopt v. People of the Territory of Utah · United States v. Josef Perez
Cited together with Illinois v. Allen · Snyder v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts · Lewis v. United States · Taylor v. United States · Johnson v. Zerbst
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 2,013 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]here the offense is not capital and the accused is not in custody, the prevailing rule has been, that if, after the trial has begun in his presence, he voluntarily absents himself, this does not nullify what has been done or prevent the completion of the trial, but, on the contrary, operates as a waiver of his right to be present, and leaves the court free to proceed with the trial in like manner and with like effect as if he were present.”
37 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It does not seem to us to be consonant with the dictates of common sense that an accused person ... should be at liberty, whenever he pleased, ... to break up a trial already commenced. The practical result of such a proposition, if allowed to be law, would be to prevent any trial whatever until the accused person himself should be pleased to permit it.... This would be a travesty of justice which could not be tolerated.... [W]e do not think that any rule of law or constitutional principle leads us to any conclusion that would be so disastrous as well to the administration of justice as to the true interests of civil liberty.... The question is one of broad public policy, whether an accused person, placed upon trial for crime and protected by all the safeguards with which the humanity of our present criminal law sedulously surrounds him, can with impunity defy the processes of that law, paralyze the proceedings of courts and juries, and turn them into a solemn farce.... ””
25 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The death of the injured person was the principal element of the homicide, but was no part of the assault and battery. At the time of the trial for the latter the death had not ensued, and not until it did ensue was the homicide committed. Then, and not before, was it possible to put the accused in jeopardy for that offense.”
14 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.