Sher v. Stoughton’s Empirical Analysis
666 F.2d 791 · 1981
Citation profile
16 federal appellate · 10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently March 2019 · most notably United States v. Williams (1984), United States v. Angiulo (1990)
16 federal appellate · 10 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 Sumner v. Mata · Remmer v. United States · Marshall v. United States · Gotthelf v. Commissioner · Parker v. Gladden
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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The touchstone of decision in a case such as we have here is thus not the mere fact of infiltration of some molecules of extra-record matter, ... but the nature of what had been infiltrated and the probability of prejudice.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““Several of the jurors said that they had discussed the calls among themselves, and other jurors admitted overhearing those discussions. The jurors who received the calls said they were told that Sher was guilty, that his defense counsel should be disregarded, that the juror should urge the other jurors to vote for the ‘electric chair’ and that the defendant’s insanity defense should be disregarded. One juror, William Nachbar, was also told that the defendant had a prior record, that he was a ‘vicious killer’ and that his co-defendant had been sentenced to death.””
1 later decision 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.