Smith v. Kelso’s Empirical Analysis
863 F.2d 1564 · 1989
Citation profile
21 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently March 2025 · most notably United States v. Sanchez (1990), Echols v. State (1996)
21 federal appellate · 3 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 Brady v. State of Maryland · United States v. Bagley · United States v. Agurs · Benton v. Maryland · Patterson v. New York
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) Do the alleged conflicts with co-defendant’s defenses go to the essence of the appellant’s defense? (2) Could the jury reasonably construct a sequence of events that accommodates the essence of both defendants’ defenses? (3) Did the conflict subject the appellant to compelling prejudice? (4) Could the trial judge ameliorate the prejudice?”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“has refused to overturn a denial of a motion for severance where each defendant has argued that his own involvement in the crime did not rise to a level justifying culpability. Although a defendant presenting this defense often attempts to bolster it by depicting a co-defendant as the central actor in the crime, we have consistently refused to find that this conflict goes to the heart of the defenses. We have concluded that the jury could decide that neither defendant's involvement had been established beyond a reasonable doubt.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“This is essentially a requirement that the defendant prove the conflict [between the defenses] was not harmless.”
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.