Oswald v. Bertrand’s Empirical Analysis
374 F.3d 475 · 2004
Citation profile
18 federal appellate · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2025 · most notably Frantz v. Hazey (2008), United States v. Benabe (2011)
18 federal appellate · 5 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Gideon v. Wainwright · Arizona v. Fulminante · Irvin v. Dowd · Smith v. Phillips · Tumey v. State of Ohio
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a]ccording to what I hear, the young man [Oswald] is guilty of what he is being accused of and things like that and everything and I just think it's a waste of time [to have a trial].”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Owens v. Frank · Canaan v. McBride“The response to the jury questionnaires against the background of enormous publicity concerning the most sensational criminal episode in the county's history, the fact that Oswald seemed so obviously guilty as to make the necessity for a trial questionable to a layperson, the tumult induced by [the second juror's] vocal complaints, the flagrant disobedience of the judge's instructions that the prospective jurors not discuss the case in advance of the trial, the likelihood that [the second juror] and perhaps other reluctant jurors would vote to convict regardless of their actual views if that would make the trial end quicker, the fact that, at least according to [the first juror], the improper discussions had already produced a consensus that Oswald was guilty as charged-these things, taken not separately but together, created a sufficiently high probability of jury bias to require on the part of the trial judge a diligent inquiry.”
1 later decision 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.