Berna v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
185 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 187 later decisions — most recently October 2020 · most notably Gardner v. State (1988), Misskelley v. State (1996)
185 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Chapman v. State of California · Bruton v. United States · Kotteakos v. United States · Rhode Island v. Innis
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 187 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“This Court has long held that “[a litigant] is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one,” for there are no perfect trials. Brown v. United States, 411 U.S. 223, 231-232 (1973), quoting Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 135 (1968), and Lutwak v. United States, 344 U.S. 604, 619 (1953). Trials are costly, not only for the parties, but also for the jurors performing their civic duty and for society which pays the judges and support personnel who manage the trials. It seems doubtful that our judicial system would have the resources to provide litigants with perfect trials, were they possible, and still keep abreast of its constantly increasing case load .... We have also come a long way from the time when all trial error was presumed prejudicial and reviewing courts were considered “citadels of technicality.” Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 759 (1946), quoting Kavanaugh, Improvement of Administration of Criminal Justice by Exercise of Judicial Power, 11 A.B.A.J. 217, 222 (1925). The harmless error rules adopted by this Court and Congress embody the principle that courts should exercise judgment in preference to the automatic reversal for “error” and ignore errors that do not affect the essential fairness of the trial. See Kotteakos, 328 U.S., 759 -760.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Jefferson v. State“[a] voluntary in-custody statement does not become the product of an `in-custody interrogation' simply because an officer in the course of appellant's narration, asks the defendant to explain or clarify something he has already said voluntarily.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Godsey
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.