Tarver v. Hopper’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

28 federal appellate · 9 state decisions

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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[a] lawyer's time and effort in preparing to defend his client in the guilt phase of a capital case continues to count at the sentencing phase.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Jenkins v. State · 947 So. 2d 1079 - Harris v. State

2. “"`A lawyer's time and effort in preparing to defend his client in the guilt phase of a capital case continues to count at the sentencing phase. Creating lingering doubt has been recognized as an effective strategy for avoiding the death penalty. We have written about it. See, e.g., Stewart v. Dugger, 877 F.2d 851, 855-56 (11th Cir.1989). In addition, a comprehensive study on the opinions of jurors in capital cases concluded: "`"Residual doubt" over the defendant's guilt is the most powerful "mitigating" fact.—[The study] suggests that the best thing a capital defendant can do to improve his chances of receiving a life sentence has nothing to do with mitigating evidence strictly speaking. The best thing he can do, all else being equal, is to raise doubt about his guilt.' "`Stephen P. Garvey, Aggravation and Mitigation in Capital Cases: What do Jurors Think?, 98 Colum.L.Rev. 1538, 1563 (1998) (footnotes omitted); see William S. Geimer & Jonathan Amsterdam, Why Jurors Vote Life or Death: Operative Factors in Ten Florida Death Penalty Cases, 15 Am.J.Crim.L. 1, 28 (1988) ("[t]he existence of some degree of doubt about the guilt of the accused was the most often recurring explanatory factor in the life recommendation cases studied."); see also Jennifer Treadway, Note, "Residual Doubt" in Capital Sentencing: No Doubt it is an Appropriate Mitigating Factor, 43 Case W.Res.L.Rev. 215 (1992). Furthermore, the American Law Institute, in a proposed model penal code, similarly recognized t”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Jenkins v. State · 947 So. 2d 1079 - Harris v. State

3. “[N]ot everything said to a witness or to his lawyer must be disclosed. For example, a promise to "speak a word" on the witness's behalf does not need to be disclosed. Likewise, a prosecutor's statement that he would "take care" of the witness does not need to be disclosed. Some promises, agreements, or understandings do not need to be disclosed because they are too ambiguous, or too loose or are of too marginal a benefit to the witness to count.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. United States v. Curtis · 794 So. 2d 553 - Ventura v. State