Smith v. Cupp’s Empirical Analysis
430 F.3d 766 · 2005
Citation profile
31 federal appellate · 2 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 80 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Mullenix v. Luna (2015), Lytle v. Bexar County (2009)
31 federal appellate · 2 district · 1 state decisions
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 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871 / Section 1983 (Ku Klux Klan Act))
Relies on Anderson v. Creighton · Graham v. Connor · Duncan v. Walker · SAUCIER v. KATZ Et Al. · Tennessee v. Garner
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 80 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'[g]eneral statements of the law' are capable of giving clear and fair warning to officers even where 'the very action in question has [not] previously been held unlawful.'”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[t]he absence of any Garner preconditions to the use of deadly force”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In [Scott and Freland ], there was no question that the lives of the officers, or the lives of both the officers and mem-, bers of the public in the area, were endangered by the fleeing suspects. Each suspect demonstrated multiple times that he either was willing to injure an officer that got in the. way of escape or was willing to persist in extremely reckless behavior that threatened the lives of all those around. The officers reacted with deadly force only after an extended interaction between police and the suspect proved that the suspect was likely to continue to threaten the lives of those around him in his attempt to escape.”
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.