Powell v. Wiman’s Empirical Analysis
287 F.2d 275 · 1961
Citation profile
24 federal appellate · 12 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently September 1988 · most notably Calley v. Callaway (1975), United States of America Ex Rel. Thomas Meers, Relator-Appellee v. Walter H. Wilkins, Warden of Attica State Prison, Attica, New York (1964)
24 federal appellate · 12 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 Berger v. United States · Napue v. People of the State of Illinois · Costello v. United States · Michigan National Bank v. Michigan · People's Church of San Fernando Valley, Inc. v. County of Los Angeles
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty . . . whose interest . . . in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done,'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The principle that a State may not knowingly use false evidence, including false testimony, to obtain a tainted conviction, implicit in any concept of ordered liberty, does not cease to apply merely because the false testimony goes only to the credibility of the witness. The jury’s estimate of the truthfulness and reliability of a given witness may well be determinative of guilt or innocence, and it is upon such subtle factors as the possible interest of the witness in testifying falsely that a defendant’s life or liberty may depend.” Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 , 269, 79 S.Ct. 1173 , 1177, 3 L.Ed.2d 1217 (1959).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Whether or not any one of the instances which we have recited in which the State failed to disclose or suppressed evidence going to Hatt's credibility would suffice by itself, the totality of all of them, under the circumstances of this case, leaves no doubt that Powell's trial was attended by such fundamental unfairness as to amount to a denial of due process of law.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.