Smith v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1954
Citation profile
1,283 federal appellate · 44 district · 308 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,988 later decisions (33 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2026 · most notably Wong Sun v. United States (1963), Jackson v. Denno (1964)
1,283 federal appellate · 44 district · 308 state decisions — followed in 36 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedSmith v. United States (from First Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Holland v. United States · Bram v. United States · Wilson v. United States · Sparf v. United States
Cited together with Opper v. United States · Holland v. United States · United States v. Calderon · Wong Sun v. United States · Warszower v. United States
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 1,988 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“All elements of the offense must be established by independent evidence or corroborated admissions, but one available mode of corroboration is for the independent evidence to bolster the confession itself and thereby prove the offense 'through' the statements of the accused.”
47 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“a long history of judicial experience with confessions and in the realization that sound law enforcement requires police investigations which extend beyond the words of the accused.”
31 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * -» * jn a crime such as tax evasion there is no tangible injury which can be isolated as a corpus de-licti. As to this crime, it cannot be shown that the crime has been committed without identifying the accused.””
13 later decisions 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.