grave doubt
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 513 U.S. 432 - O'NEAL v. McAninch · 1995Most cited · 2,584 citing opinions
that, in the judge's mind, the matter is so evenly balanced that he feels himself in virtual equipoise as to the harmlessness of the error.) We conclude that the uncertain judge should treat the error, not as if it were harmless, but as if it affected the verdict ( i.e., as if it had a "substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict").
How often courts cite the case defining “grave doubt”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “grave doubt” — 2,581 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.