Carter v. Kentucky’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
207 federal appellate · 12 district · 558 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 918 later decisions (28 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Boyde v. California (1990), State v. Fanning (1982)
207 federal appellate · 12 district · 558 state decisions — followed in 37 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 Chapman v. State of California · Griffin v. California · Sandstrom v. Montana · Malloy v. Hogan · Murphy v. Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor
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 918 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a state trial judge has the constitutional obligation, upon proper request, to minimize the danger that the jury will give evidentiary weight to a defendant's failure to testify”
42 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Peek v. Kemp · Middleton v. Evatt“a criminal trial judge must give a 'no-adverse-inference' jury instruction when requested by a defendant to do so.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Phillips v. State · Mosley v. State“draw from the defendant's silence broad inferences of guilt.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. White v. Woodall · People v. Boyd
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.