Downs v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently July 2017 · most notably Diehl v. State (1982), United States v. Aparicio-Soria (2014)
4 federal appellate · 33 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 Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire · Cohen v. California · Gooding v. Wilson · Lewis v. City of New Orleans · Bachellar v. Maryland
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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Appellant Downs was conversing with three friends while eating an early morning breakfast in a Lexington Park restaurant. In the course of the conversation Downs said in a loud voice, “All the goddamn policemen in this County are no fucking good, they’re just after me.” A few minutes later he loudly said, “[T]he fucking niggers in this County are no better than goddamn policemen.” A uniformed State Trooper (Trooper Taylor) sitting at a table about eight feet away from the booth in which Downs and his friends were seated overheard these remarks. The trooper went over to Downs’ booth and told him that his talk was disruptive and that he would be placed under arrest if he did not refrain from using such profane language. Downs replied, “You ain’t bad enough to place me under arrest,” whereupon the trooper grabbed him and informed him that he was under arrest for disorderly conduct. A scuffle ensued, but Taylor finally managed to handcuff Downs.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any [c]onstitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words-those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“White son of a bitch, I'll kill you. You son of a bitch, I'll choke you to death. You son of a bitch, if you ever put your hands on me again, I'll cut you all to pieces.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Authelet · Diehl 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.