Yates v. Evatt’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
460 federal appellate · 19 district · 695 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,418 later decisions (28 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2025 · most notably Brecht v. Abrahamson (1993), Estelle v. McGuire (1991)
460 federal appellate · 19 district · 695 state decisions — followed in 36 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 · In the Matter of Samuel Winship · Delaware v. Van Arsdall · Arizona v. Fulminante · Sandstrom v. Montana
Cited together with Chapman v. State of California · Estelle v. McGuire · Sullivan v. Louisiana · Arizona v. Fulminante · Rose v. Clark
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 1,418 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To say that an error did not contribute to the verdict is ... to find that error unimportant in relation to everything else the jury considered on the issue in question, as revealed in the record.”
61 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.”
29 later decisions quote this exact passage“unimportant in relation to everything else the jury considered on the issue in question, as revealed in the record.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.