Napue v. People of the State of Illinois’s Empirical Analysis
1959
Citation profile
2,457 federal appellate · 267 district · 2,348 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7,032 later decisions (115 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Brady v. State of Maryland (1963), United States v. Wade (1967)
2,457 federal appellate · 267 district · 2,348 state decisions — followed in 48 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 Roth v. United States · Mooney v. Holohan · Cooper v. Aaron · Haley v. Ohio
Cited together with Brady v. State of Maryland · Giglio v. United States · United States v. Agurs · Mooney v. Holohan · United States v. Bagley
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 7,032 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The jury's estimate of the truthfulness and reliability of a given witness may well be determinative of guilt or innocence, and it is upon such subtle factors as the possible interest of the witness in testifying falsely that a defendant's life or liberty may depend.”
202 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“could ... in any reasonable likelihood have affected the judgment of the jury.”
43 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“because the jury 'might well have concluded that [the witness] had fabricated testimony in order to curry the [prosecution's] favor '”
10 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.