Chapman v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 federal appellate · 1 district · 8 state decisions

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 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The rationale for this rule is clear. If undue delay has occurred in the arrest of a defendant, he is obviously aware of this at the time of his trial. Indeed, in practice, indictments, informations or complaints set forth the date of the alleged offense, and the defendant, of course, knows when he was arrested. If the pre-arrest delay has prejudiced the accused in his defense, this fact too will be evident to him by the time the trial commences. Therefore, he is in the most favorable position by that time to appraise the injury resulting to him from the delay, and it is then that he should make known to the Court his claim of prejudice. This requirement, moreover, serves to place the government in a better position to counter the claim of prejudice by being afforded the opportunity at a voir dire examination promptly to show the absence thereof, or to explain the reasons for the delay, something it may be foreclosed from doing later. As we have stated, `If proper objections had been made at trial, the government might well have been able to offer evidence to the contrary.' * * *”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Peterson v. United States