Brock v. State of North Carolina’s Empirical Analysis
1953
Citation profile
124 federal appellate · 17 district · 144 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 390 later decisions (29 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2009 · most notably Fay v. Noia (1963), Benton v. Maryland (1969)
124 federal appellate · 17 district · 144 state decisions — followed in 29 states
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 Rochin v. People of California · Palko v. State of Connecticut · Wade v. Hunter · Wolf v. People of the State of Colorado · Ex parte Lange
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 390 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““This Court has long favored the rule of discretion in the trial judge to declare a mistrial and to require another panel to try the defendant if the ends of justice will be best served. Wade v. Hunter, 336 U.S. 684 [ 69 S.Ct. 834 , 93 L.Ed. 974 ]; Thompson v. United States, 155 U.S. 271 , 273-274 [ 15 S.Ct. 73 , 74, 39 L.Ed. 146 ]. As was said in Wade v. Hunter, supra, [336 U.S.] p. 690 [69 S.Ct. at page 638, 93 L.Ed. 974 ], ‘a trial can be discontinued when particular circumstances manifest a necessity for so doing, and when failure to discontinue would defeat the ends of justice.’ ””
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * . * * We think that in all cases of this nature, the law has invested courts of justice with the authority to discharge a jury from giving any verdict, whenever, in their opinion, taking all the circumstances into consideration, there is a manifest necessity for the act, or the ends of justice would otherwise be defeated. They are to exercise a sound discretion on the subject; and it is impossible to define all the circumstances which would render it proper to interfere. To be sure, the power ought to be used with the greatest caution, under urgent circumstances, and for very plain and obvious causes; and, in capital cases especially, courts should be extremely careful how they interfere with any of the chances of life, in favor of the prisoner. But, after all, they have the right to order the discharge; and the security which the public have for the faithful, sound, and conscientious exercise of this discretion, rests in this, as in other cases, upon the responsibility of the judges, under their oaths of office. * * * ””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent““A State falls short of its obligation when it callously subjects an individual to successive retrials on a charge on which he has been acquitted or prevents a trial from proceeding to a termination in favor of the accused merely in order to allow a prosecutor who ha? been incompetent or casual or even ineffective to see if he cannot do better a second time.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.