Griffin v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
1,183 federal appellate · 61 district · 603 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,358 later decisions (9 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Sochor v. Florida (1992), 4 Cal. 4th 1116 - People v. Guiton (1993)
1,183 federal appellate · 61 district · 603 state decisions — followed in 35 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Jackson v. Virginia · Duncan v. State of Louisiana · United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. · Leary v. United States · Zant v. Stephens
Cited together with Yates v. United States · United States v. Olano · Jackson v. Virginia · Turner v. United States · Stromberg v. People of State of California
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 2,358 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Jurors are not generally equipped to determine whether a particular theory of conviction submitted to them is contrary to law — whether, for example, the action in question is protected by the Constitution, is time barred, or fails to come within the statutory definition of the crime. When, therefore, jurors have been left the option of relying upon a legally inadequate theory, there is no reason to think that their own intelligence and expertise will save them from that error. Quite the opposite is true, however, when they have been left the option of relying upon a factually inadequate theory, since jurors are well equipped to analyze the evidence.”
95 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]here a provision of the Constitution forbids conviction on a particular ground, the constitutional guarantee is violated by a general verdict that may have rested on that ground.”
63 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]hen a jury returns a guilty verdict on an indictment charging several acts in the conjunctive ... the verdict stands if the evidence is sufficient with respect to any one of the acts charged.”
21 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.