Anderson v. Nelson’s Empirical Analysis
1968
Citation profile
188 federal appellate · 12 district · 88 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 355 later decisions (17 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2018 · most notably Wainwright v. Sykes (1977), Brecht v. Abrahamson (1993)
188 federal appellate · 12 district · 88 state decisions — followed in 22 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
reviewedWilson v. Anderson (from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Griffin v. California · Fay v. Noia · Henry v. State of Mississippi
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 355 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“where such comment is extensive, where an inference of guilt from silence is stressed to the jury as a basis for the conviction, and where there is evidence that could have supported acquittal.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Mr. Anderson could have gotten on the stand and told you, “No, I didn’t sign that,” or, “I wasn’t up to the Calverts [trucking firm] and somebody else told me about it, as I told Sergeant Sonberg [the arresting officer].” In other words, you can consider that, when a person could be expected to know something about something, and he doesn’t tell you what obviously he must know, why, then you can draw certain inferences from that.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Ball““In this posture, we cannot say that the prosecutor’s extensive argument asking the jury to overlook inferences favorable to petitioner because he invoked his constitutional right not to testify was, in the words of Chapman , ‘harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ” Anderson at 525 , 88 S.Ct. at 1135 .”
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.