Underwood v. Clark’s Empirical Analysis
939 F.2d 473 · 1991
Citation profile
49 federal appellate · 10 district · 33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 145 later decisions — most recently September 2025 · most notably State v. Bey (1999), Scarpa v. Dubois (1994)
49 federal appellate · 10 district · 33 state decisions — followed in 16 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 Jones v. Barnes · Rock v. Arkansas · Strauss v. City of Chicago · People v. Curtis · United States v. Velasquez
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 145 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] barebones assertion by a defendant, albeit made under oath, is insufficient to require a hearing or other action on his claim that his right [to appeal] was denied him. It just is too facile a tactic to be allowed to succeed. Some greater particularity is necessary — and also [ ] some substantiation is necessary ... to give the claim sufficient credibility to warrant a further investment of judicial resources in determining the truth of the claim.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[I]f in closing argument counsel acknowledges what the course of the trial has made undeniable — that on a particular count the evidence of guilt is overwhelming[, s]uch acknowledgment can be a sound tactic when the evidence is indeed overwhelming (and there is no reason to suppose any juror doubts this) and when the count in question is a lesser count, so that there is an advantage to be gained by winning the confidence of the jury.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Gordon · State v. Gordon“a grave practical difficulty in establishing a mechanism that will protect a criminal defendant's personal right . . . to testify in his own behalf without rendering the criminal process unworkable.”
4 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.