Case Citator › Patton v. United States

Patton v. United States

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Overruled in part
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
281 U.S. 276
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
87 of 87
Citing cases (total)
1,161
Treatment dates
1968–1970

Status

Overruled in part
A reviewed court has overruled part of this case’s holding. Patton v. United States has been overruled in part: all 87 flagged citations have been read, with the 2 confirmed adverse treatments listed below. Williams v. Florida displaced Patton's conclusion that a constitutionally required jury must contain exactly twelve members, but did not disturb Patton's jury-waiver rules.
More on how this was screened

State v. Marrujo later limited those waiver safeguards to felony cases and declined to extend them to misdemeanors or petty misdemeanors. The other reviewed opinions applied Patton's waiver rules, reported Williams's treatment in case-history parentheticals, discussed treatment of other authorities, or rejected litigants' contrary positions.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

1,161 later cases cite Patton v. United States; 87 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Patton v. United States?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Overruled in part

  • The Supreme Court displaced Patton's conclusion that a constitutionally required jury must contain exactly twelve members, holding that twelve members are not a necessary ingredient of trial by jury.

    Williams v. Florida · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    The question in this case then is whether the constitutional guarantee of a trial by “jury” necessarily requires trial by exactly 12 persons, rather than some lesser number — in this case six. We hold that the 12-man panel is not a necessary ingredient of “trial by jury,” and that respondent’s refusal to impanel more than the six members provided for by Florida law did not violate petitioner’s Sixth Amendment rights as applied to the States through the Fourteenth. ... Subsequent decisions have reaffirmed the *92announcement in Thompson, often in dictum29 and usually by relying — where there was any discussion of the issue at all — solely on the fact that the common-law jury consisted of 12.30 See Patton v. United States, 281 U. S. 276, 288 (1930); 31 Rassmussen v. United States, 197 U. S. 516, 519 (1905); Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U. S. 581, 586 (1900).
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Limited

  • The Supreme Court of New Mexico confined Patton's government-consent, court-approval, and express-intelligent-consent safeguards to felony jury waivers and declined to extend them to misdemeanors or petty misdemeanors.

    State v. Marrujo · Supreme Court of New Mexico · filed

    The safeguards thrown around the exercise of waiver of a jury in felony cases by Patton were expressly adopted, i. e., there must be “the consent of government counsel and the sanction of the court must be had, in addition to the express and intelligent consent of the defendant.” See also State v. Shroyer, supra. The requirement of the above safeguards was limited to waivers in felony cases and has never been extended to petty misdemeanors or misdemeanors.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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