Harris v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
247 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 249 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Lockhart v. Nelson (1988), Misskelley v. State (1996)
247 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 Burks v. United States · Pollard v. State · Hufsmith v. Weaver · Harris v. State
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 249 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A motion for a directed verdict is a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence. The test for such motions is whether the verdict is supported by substantial evidence, direct or circumstantial. Substantial evidence is evidence of sufficient certainty and precision to compel a conclusion one way or another and pass beyond mere suspicion or conjecture. On appeal, we review the evidence in the light most favorable to the appellee and consider only the evidence that supports the verdict.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“In short, reversal for trial error, as distinguished from evidentiary insufficiency, does not constitute a decision to the effect that the government has failed to prove its case. As such, it implies nothing with respect to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. Rather, it is a determination that a defendant has been convicted through a judicial process which is defective in some fundamental respect, e.g., incorrect instructions, or prosecutorial misconduct.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Rogers v. State“Because of unfortuitous errors by the trial court and the defendant’s right to object to those errors, the defendant should not be precluded from a review of the sufficiency or, in the alternative, forced to gamble entirely on the sufficiency issue by electing to forego all other objections. For an appellate court to avoid the argument by reversing on other grounds would ignore the protection intended by the double jeopardy clause as interpreted in Burks.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Maples 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.