Ball v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 146 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 154 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2022 · most notably Wiggins v. Smith, Warden (2003), Conyers v. State (1999)
4 federal appellate · 146 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 Davis v. Alaska · Payne v. Tennessee · Pennsylvania v. Ritchie · Soberon v. United States · Needler v. Valley National Bank of Arizona
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 154 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A confession clearly is not voluntary if it is the product of physical or psychological coercion. A person who has committed an illegal act, however, is not always eager to admit his or her wrongdoing. Police officers, charged with investigating crimes and bringing perpetrators to justice, are permitted to use a certain amount of subterfuge, when questioning an individual about his or her suspected involvement in a crime.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“permissible scope of victim impact testimony ... lies within the sound discretion of the presiding judge, as limited by Md.Code (1957, 1996 Repl.Vol.), Art. 27, § 413(c)(1)(v).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Lopez v. State · Conyers v. State“Detective Bollinger was not suggesting to Appellant that the police or any other State official would confer any special benefit or advantage on Appellant in exchange for a written confession. Rather, the message that Detective Bollinger was trying to convey when he stated that it would be “better” for Appellant was simply that a written confession would provide Appellant an opportunity to explain his criminal behavior in his own words. To the extent that this opportunity constituted a “benefit” to Appellant, it did not rise to the level of an improper inducement. That Appellant was aware that no other benefit was to be realized from providing a written confession is evidenced, in fact, by his remark to Detective Bollinger that “I am going to convict myself.””
2 later decisions 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.