Lee v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1943
Citation profile
70 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 72 later decisions — most recently April 1998 · most notably Mason v. State (1953), Knight v. State (1962)
70 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 Diaz v. United States · Hopt v. People of the Territory of Utah · Frost v. State · Sherrod v. State · People v. La Barbera
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 72 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In cases of felony our courts, with substantial accord, have regarded [the right of the defendant to be present] as extending to every stage of the trial, inclusive of the empaneling of the jury and the reception of the verdict, and as being scarcely less important to the accused than the right of trial itself. And with like accord they have regarded an accused who is in custody and one who is charged with a capital offense as incapable of waiving the right; the one, because his presence or absence is not within his own control, and the other because, in addition to being usually in custody, he is deemed to suffer the constraint naturally incident to an apprehension of the awful penalty that would follow conviction. But, where 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.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“There is of course no controversy but that, unless his presence is waived, a verdict received in the absence of a defendant is void, and is the equivalent to an *Page 446 acquittal.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Davis v. State“jealous policy to protect a defendant against himself and to vouchsafe absolute fairness to him ...”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.