Sieling v. Eyman’s Empirical Analysis
478 F.2d 211 · 1973
Citation profile
66 federal appellate · 5 district · 54 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 142 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2022 · most notably Godinez v. Moran (1993), de Kaplany v. Enomoto (1976)
66 federal appellate · 5 district · 54 state decisions — followed in 21 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 Boykin v. Alabama · Johnson v. Zerbst · Townsend v. Sain · Pointer v. Texas · Duncan v. State of Louisiana
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 142 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A defendant is not competent to plead guilty if a mental illness has substantially impaired his ability to make a reasoned choice among the alternatives presented to him and to understand the nature of the consequences of his plea.”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“assess a defendant's competency with specific reference to the gravity of the decisions with which the defendant is faced.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * * * In the typical case — that is, when the defendant’s sanity or mental capacity has not been put in issue — the determination of the validity of the waiver by the defendant can be assessed with an assumption that he is mentally capable of making the weighty decisions involved in giving up his right to counsel, cross-examination, trial by jury, or his privilege against self-incrimination. However, where a substantial question of a defendant’s mental capacity has arisen in a criminal proceedings, it is logically inconsistent to suggest that his waiver can be examined by mere reference to those criteria we examine in cases where the defendant is presumed competent, since in the latter cases no inquiry into the defendant’s mental capacity to make the waiver is made, (citations omitted) If a defendant who can be presumed competent pleads guilty, a court can assess the adequacy of his waiver by examination of the objective evidence in the record, such as the advice given him by the court as to the nature of the charge, the waivers resulting from the plea and the sentencing prospects, ’ as well as the defendant’s statements or responses made in open court. Where the question of a defendant’s lack of mental capacity lurks in the background, however, the same inquiry, while still necessary, fails to completely resolve the question of whether the defendant can properly be said to have had a ‘rational, as' well as a factual, understanding’ * * *_ “We think Westbrook makes it plain”
3 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.