Milton v. Wainwright’s Empirical Analysis
1972
Citation profile
531 federal appellate · 53 district · 654 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,556 later decisions (55 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably Illinois v. Gates (1983), United States v. Leon (1984)
531 federal appellate · 53 district · 654 state decisions — followed in 45 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
reviewedMilton v. Wainwright (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Johnson v. Zerbst · Gideon v. Wainwright · Stovall v. Denno · Powell v. State of Alabama Patterson
Cited together with Chapman v. State of California · Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Harrington v. California · Schneble v. Florida · Fahy v. Connecticut
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 1,556 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e do not close our eyes to the reality of overwhelming evidence of guilt fairly established in the state court years ago by use of evidence not challenged here; the use of the additional evidence challenged in this proceeding and arguably open to challenge was, beyond reasonable doubt, harmless.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a]n issue of the 'retroactivity' of a decision ... is not even presented unless the decision in question marks a sharp break in the web of the law.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The common thread connecting these cases is that each involved “trial error” — error which occurred during the presentation of the case to the jury, and which may therefore be quantitatively assessed in the context of other evidence presented in order to determine whether its admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”
8 later decisions 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.