State v. Witt’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently January 2019 · most notably State v. Moriwake (1982), State v. Abbati (1985)
4 federal appellate · 26 state decisions — followed in 16 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 United States v. Jorn · Illinois v. Somerville · Downum v. United States · United States v. Josef Perez · United States v. Gunter
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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... trial judges have the inherent authority to terminate a prosecution in the exercise of a sound judicial discretion, where ... repeated trials, free of prejudicial error, have resulted in genuinely deadlocked juries and where it appears that at future trials substantially the same evidence will be presented and that the probability of continued hung juries is great.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Moriwake · State v. Kyles“"This opinion is not to be construed as fixing the permissible or impermissible number of mistrials caused by deadlocked juries. The relevant principles must be applied on an ad hoc basis. The court is not announcing a per se rule or applying a formula mechanically. The sound judicial discretion of a trial judge to terminate a criminal prosecution is a power that ought to be used with the utmost caution and then only where the circumstances clearly justify such action."”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[r]equiring defendants to face additional juries with the continuing prospect of no verdict offends traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”
2 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.