Grades v. Boles’s Empirical Analysis
398 F.2d 409 · 1968
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 4 district · 18 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 51 later decisions — most recently March 2017 · most notably United States v. Pelton (1987), Commonwealth v. Meehan (1979)
17 federal appellate · 4 district · 18 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Johnson v. State of New Jersey · Malloy v. Hogan · MacHibroda v. United States · Kercheval v. United States
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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In the instant case, no matter how much the legally-trained prosecutor may have hedged his responses with words like “policy” or “in all probability,” there is no gainsaying the fact that petitioner believed, as he testified at his trial and again at his habeas corpus hearing, “I was assured by the Prosecutor that all other charges would be dropped.” Petitioner did not seek out the prosecutor for an abstract discussion on criminal procedures in Cabell County. He wanted to know how he would be affected by “cooperating” with the police or by failing to do so. Grades asked whether he would be tried as a recidivist if he were convicted on the attempted robbery charge, not whether it was the prosecutor’s general policy to press for the mandatory life sentence against persons who are convicted repeatedly of felonies. To the petitioner’s ears, the prosecutor’s words could have meant only one thing: If he signed the statement, he would be punished for attempted robbery and nothing else. Nor is there room for doubt that it was this understanding of immunity from prosecution for several other offenses, including the dreaded recidivist charge, that at least in part prompted Grades to sign the confession. Seventy years ago the Supreme Court recognized the inherent difficulty of calibrating the effect of an unconstitutional inducement, when it observed, “** * the law cannot measure the force of the influence used, or decide upon its effect upon the mind of the prisoner, and therefore excl”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“A confession, in order to be admissible, must be free and voluntary; that is, must not be extracted by any sort of threats or violence, nor obtained by any direct or implied promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any improper influence ....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“species of plea bargaining shorn of any of the essential safeguards mandated for true plea bargaining.”
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.