Kelly v. South Carolina’s Empirical Analysis
2002
Citation profile
95 federal appellate · 6 district · 114 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 251 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2024 · most notably 30 Cal. 4th 226 - People v. Prieto (2003), 37 Cal. 4th 50 - People v. Cornwell (2005)
95 federal appellate · 6 district · 114 state decisions — followed in 11 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 Godfrey v. Georgia · Lowenfield v. Phelps · Simmons v. South Carolina · California v. Ramos · Penry v. Johnson
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 251 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A trial judge's duty is to give instructions sufficient to explain the law, an obligation that exists independently of any question from the jurors or any indication of perplexity on their part.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage“Time after time appellate courts have found jury instructions to be insufficiently clear without any record that the jury manifested its confusion.”).”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“this is not an issue here, nor is there an issue about a defendant’s entitlement to instruction on a parole ineligibility law when the State's evidence shows future dangerousness but the prosecutor does not argue it. The only questions in this case are whether the evidence presented and the argument made at [Mr. Mollett's] trial placed future dangerousness at issue. The answer to each question is yes, and we need go no further than Simmons in our discussion.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.