Wright v. West’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
452 federal appellate · 104 district · 174 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,223 later decisions (43 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Williams v. Taylor (2000), Heck v. Humphrey (1994)
452 federal appellate · 104 district · 174 state decisions — followed in 22 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 Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Jackson v. Virginia · Anderson v. Creighton · Schneckloth v. Bustamonte · Barker v. Wingo
Cited together with Jackson v. Virginia · Strickland v. Washington · Williams v. Taylor · Teague v. Lane · Brecht v. Abrahamson
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 1,223 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“‘sharply limited[,]’ and a court ‘faced with a record of historical facts that supports conflicting inferences must presume — even if it does not affirmatively appear in the record — that the trier of fact resolved any such conflicts in favor of the prosecution, and must defer to that resolution.’”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“If the rule in question is one which of necessity requires a case-by-case examination of the evidence, then we can tolerate a number of specific applications without saying that those applications themselves create a new rule ... Where the beginning point is a rule of this general application, a rule designed for the specific purpose of evaluating a myriad of factual contexts, it will be the infrequent case that yields a result so novel that it forges a new rule, one not dictated by precedent.”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.”
8 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.