Williams v. Lane’s Empirical Analysis
826 F.2d 654 · 1987
Citation profile
53 federal appellate · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 89 later decisions — most recently March 2023 · most notably United States v. Sblendorio (1987), United States v. Gonzalez (1991)
53 federal appellate · 5 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Wainwright v. Sykes · Griffin v. California · Murray v. Carrier · Engle v. Isaac
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 89 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Prosecutorial references to 'uncontradicted' testimony are more readily deemed indirect references to the defendant's failure to testify in cases where it is highly unlikely that at least a portion of the testimony could have been contradicted by anyone other than the defendant.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he privilege against self-incrimination prohibits a prosecutor from commenting on a defendant’s failure to testify. However, a prosecutor may properly comment upon a defendant’s failure to present witnesses so long as it is not phrased to call attention to defendant’s own failure to testify. The test is whether the comment is manifestly intended to call attention to the defendant’s failure to testify, and is ... of such a character that the jury would naturally and necessarily take it to be a comment on the failure to testify.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a] federal court sitting in habeas corpus is required to respect a state court's finding of waiver or procedural default under state law. Federal courts do not sit to correct errors made by state courts in the interpretation and application of state law.”
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.