Gray v. Hutto’s Empirical Analysis
648 F.2d 210 · 1981
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently January 2013
4 federal appellate · 6 state decisions
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 Mattox v. United States
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In short, however strong Gray’s case for a mistrial might have been had the court been immediately notified, counsel’s deliberate inaction amounted to a conscious decision to find out what the jury was going to do. Obviously counsel preferred to proceed in hopes that the jury might acquit. Counsel’s approach, were we to grant the requested habeas corpus and accompanying new trial, would allow the defendant two bites at the apple, with a most unfair reduction, because of the passage of time (more than two years), in the probability that the Commonwealth could present its case as strongly as would have been possible had a mistrial, and consequent new trial, been sought and granted immediately. Thus, we substantively refrain from deciding whether it would have been appropriate, once the assumption was made that the juror had committed the claimed impropriety, to attempt to correct or neutralize the questionable conduct by a cautionary instruction. Even if it was not, the allowing of time to pass, with the consequent adverse changes in the position of the Common wealth and the inevitable prejudicial increase in expenditure of time and effort, have cost Gray the force of the argument.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Gray ... might have raised a very serious question. “Private communications, possibly prejudicial, between jurors and third persons, are absolutely forbidden, and invalidate the verdict, at least unless their harmlessness is made to appear.” Mattox v. United States, 146 U.S. 140, 150 , 13 S.Ct. 50, 53 , 36 L.Ed. 917 (1892).”
1 later decision 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.