Whitus v. Balkcom’s Empirical Analysis
333 F.2d 496 · 1964
Citation profile
65 federal appellate · 4 district · 13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 110 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2000 · most notably Henry v. State of Mississippi (1965), Whitus v. State of Georgia Whitus (1967)
65 federal appellate · 4 district · 13 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 Johnson v. Zerbst · Fay v. Noia · Brown v. Allen · Palko v. State of Connecticut · Carnley v. Cochran
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 110 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The petitioners and their attorneys had no desire to give up their right to be tried by a jury chosen without regard to the race of the jurors. It was not to their interest to do so — except as a choice of evils. A choice of evils was indeed the only state remedy open to them. The petitioners could choose to be prejudiced by the hostility the attack on the all-white jury system would stir up. Or they could choose to be prejudiced by being deprived of a trial by a jury of their peers selected impartially from a cross-section of the community. This is the “grisly”, hard, Hobson’s choice the State puts to Negro defendants when it systematically excludes Negroes from juries; white defendants are not subjected to this burden. The constitutional vice is not just the exclusion of Negroes from juries. It is also the State’s requiring Negro defendants to choose between an unfairly constituted jury and a prejudiced jury. We hold that this discrimination violates both the equal protection and the due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Gates v. Zant““Under no reasonable view can the State’s version of Noia’s reason for not appealing support an inference of deliberate by-passing of the state court system. For Noia to have appealed in 1942 would have been to run a substantial risk of electrocution. His was the grisly choice whether to sit content with life imprisonment or to travel the uncertain avenue of appeal which, if successful, might well have led to a retrial and death sentence. See, e. g., Palko v. [State of] Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 , 58 S.Ct. 149 , 82 L.Ed. 288 . He declined to play Russian roulette in this fashion. This was a choice by Noia not to appeal, but under the circumstances it cannot realistically be deemed a merely tactical or strategic litigation step, or in any way a deliberate circumvention of state procedures.” 372 U.S. at 439-440 , 83 S.Ct. at 849 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““after consultation with competent counsel or otherwise, understandingly and knowingly forewent the privilege of seeking to vindicate his federal claims in the state courts, whether for strategic, tactical, or any other reasons that can fairly be described as the deliberate bypassing of state procedures. . . .” 379 U.S. at 451 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Dickson 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.