Cotner v. Henry’s Empirical Analysis
394 F.2d 873 · 1968
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 1 district · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently January 2025 · most notably Sullivan v. Murphy (1973), Commonwealth v. Appleby (1980)
9 federal appellate · 1 district · 23 state decisions — followed in 16 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Griswold v. State of Connecticut · Brown v. Allen · Kuhn v. State · Koepke v. Hill
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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he import of the Griswold decision is that [only] private, consensual, marital relations are protected from regulation by the State through the use of a criminal penalty.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The import of the Griswold [Griswold v. State, 381 U.S. 479 , 85 S.Ct. 1678 , 14 L.Ed.2d 510 ] decision is that private, consensual, marital relations are protected from regulation by the state through the use of a criminal penalty. No appellate court in Indiana has had the opportunity to interpret the Indiana Sodomy Statute in light of its potential application to the privacy of married couples. Under Griswold Indiana courts could not interpret the statute constitutionally as making private consensual physical relations between married persons a crime absent a clear showing that the state had an interest in preventing such relations, which outweighed the constitutional right to marital privacy. * * * the protection of the Griswold rule would not be available to Cotner if there was a showing that Cotner employed force. 394 F.2d at 875 and 876.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Burns' Ind. Stat. (1956 Repl.), § 10-4221: "Whoever commits the abominable and detestable crime against nature with mankind or beast; or whoever entices, allures, instigates or aids any person under the age of twenty-one [21] years to commit masturbation or self-pollution, shall be deemed guilty of sodomy, and, on conviction, shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars [$100] nor more than one thousand dollars [$1,000], to which may be added imprisonment in the state prison not less than two [2] years nor more than fourteen [14] years. [Acts 1905, ch. 169, § 473, p. 584.]"”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Dixon v. State
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.