Thompson v. Wainwright’s Empirical Analysis
601 F.2d 768 · 1979
Citation profile
42 federal appellate · 4 district · 69 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 139 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Edwards v. Arizona (1981), Davis v. United States (1994)
42 federal appellate · 4 district · 69 state decisions — followed in 28 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Harris v. New York · Michigan v. Mosley · Fare v. Michael C. · Oregon v. Hass
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 139 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[Wjhenever even an equivocal request for an attorney is made by a suspect during custodial interrogation, the scope of that interrogation is immediately narrowed to one subject and one only. Further questioning thereafter must be limited to clarifying that request until it is clarified.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he limited inquiry permissible after an equivocal request for legal counsel may not take the form of an argument between interrogators and suspect about whether having counsel would be in the suspect's best interests or not. Nor may it incorporate a presumption by the interrogator to tell the suspect what counsel's advice to him would be if he were present. Such measures are foreign to the purpose of clarification, which is not to persuade but to discern. . . . . ... The point is that counsel's advice about what is best for the suspect to do is for counsel, not the interrogator, to give. And it is for him to give after consultation with his client and after weighing where the suspect's best interests lie from the point of view of the suspect, not from that of a policeman be he ever so well intentioned. Until this occurs, it is simply impossible to predict what counsel's advice would be; and even if it were, the right to advice of counsel surely is the right to advice from counsel, not from the interrogator.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“desire[d] to make a statement but ... that he first wanted to tell his story to an attorney”
2 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.