Smith v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
81 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 81 later decisions — most recently November 2025 · most notably Misskelley v. State (1996), Mills v. State (1995)
81 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 North Carolina v. Pearce · Chaffin v. Stynchcombe · Freeman v. State · Core v. State · Acklin 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 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a] confession of a defendant, unless made in open court, will not warrant a conviction, unless accompanied with other proof that such an offense was committed.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Trotter v. State · Mills v. State“was not written with a view to protecting against the mere possibility that, once the slate is wiped clean and the prosecution begins anew, a fresh sentence may be higher for some valid reason associated with the need for flexibility and discretion in the sentencing process. The possibility of a higher sentence was recognized and accepted as a legitimate concomitant of the retrial process.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Butler 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.