Ellis v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
416 F.2d 791 · 1969
Citation profile
84 federal appellate · 3 district · 66 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 180 later decisions — most recently July 2020 · most notably United States v. Leonard (1974), Bowles v. United States (1970)
84 federal appellate · 3 district · 66 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 18 U.S.C. § 3486 (§ 248 of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996)
Relies on Katz v. United States · Pointer v. Texas · Griswold v. State of Connecticut · Boyd v. United States · Malloy v. Hogan
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 180 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] witness who voluntarily testifies before a grand jury without invoking the privilege against self-incrimination, of which he has been advised, waives the privilege and may not thereafter claim it when he is called to testify as a witness at the trial on the indictment returned by the grand jury, where the witness is not the defendant, or under indictment.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“where a non-indicted witness has waived his Fifth Amendment privilege by testifying before a grand jury voluntarily and with knowledge of his privilege, his waiver extends to a subsequent trial based on an indictment returned by the grand jury that heard his testimony.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“It would impede sound law enforcement if an implicated but cooperating witness can decide, after he has made disclosure to the grand jury, that he will refuse to testify at trial. The Government may have structured its case around this witness, and be unable at a late hour, often after jeopardy has attached, to recast an investigation. Leads that might have been explored in the past, with expenditure of much money and time, and were put aside with this witness’s cooperation, may now be lost beyond retrieval. The witness may have obtained an effective immunity for himself, especially if the investigation ripened just before the expiration of the statute of limitations, and then be able to balk all prosecution. And even a cooperative witness may be made vulnerable, by a doctrine that gives him choice, to the threats and blandishments of the defendant. There are doubtless other considerations of like import, but these suffice to establish the interest of law enforcement. 1”
2 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.