State v. McDowell’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 75 later decisions — most recently February 2016 · most notably North Carolina Department of Environment & Natural Resources v. Carroll (2004), State v. Robbins (1987)
6 federal appellate · 64 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 Brady v. State of Maryland · Kotteakos v. United States · United States v. Agurs · Napue v. People of the State of Illinois · Mooney v. Holohan
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 75 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“State courts are no less obligated to protect and no less capable of protecting a defendant’s federal constitutional rights than are federal courts. In performing this obligation a state court should exercise and apply its own independent judgment, treating, of course, decisions of the United States Supreme Court as binding and according to decisions of lower federal courts such persuasiveness as these decisions might reasonably command.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage“"* * * Would the evidence, had it been disclosed to the jury which convicted defendant, and in light of all other evidence which that jury heard, likely have created in the jury's mind a reasonable doubt which did not otherwise exist as to defendant's guilt?"”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“did not have the legal standard which we articulate today to guide him in his consideration of the case,... it is not reasonable to expect him to have applied it without the benefit of this opinion.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.