Grant v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 4 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The family members painted a rather depressing picture of the circumstances into which Grant was born and in which he grew up. John Marion Grant was the sixth of nine children and the last fathered by his mother’s former husband, Walter Grant. FN23 Walter left the family home in Ada, Oklahoma approximately one month before John was born, leaving Ruth with six children to raise on her own. Walter moved to Los Angeles and never provided any financial support to Ruth or the children. Although the two oldest brothers eventually went to live with Walter in Los Angeles, Grant was left in Oklahoma and had very little contact with his father while he was growing up. During the three years following Walter’s departure and Grant’s birth, Ruth had three more children (Andrea, Gregory, and O.C.), the last of which was • named after their father, O.C. Frazier. O.C. Frazier never lived in Ruth’s home with the children, and John never experienced having a male role model in the family home. Instead, the two oldest sisters in the family were expected to play very substantial roles in running the home and raising and disciplining the younger children, including Grant, even while they were still children themselves. Ruth’s only sources of income to support' her large family were Aid to Dependent Children and some part-time work cleaning people’s homes. LaRonda described their family as “dirt poor, extremely poor.” The first family home in Ada had only three rooms and no indoor plumbing, and th”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Grant v. Trammell

2. “We find that counsel’s performance was not deficient. The reasonableness of counsel’s actions may be determined or substantially influenced by the defendant’s own statements or actions. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691 , 104 S.Ct. at 2066 ; Romano v. Gibson, 239 F.3d 1156 , 1181 (10th Cir.2001), cert. denied, 534 U.S. 1046 , 122 S.Ct. 628 , 151 L.Ed.2d 548 (2001).... Grant’s wish to exclude his family from the proceedings controlled trial counsel’s actions in this case. Trial counsel did present some mitigating evidence including Grant’s own testimony and a prison psychiatrist. The prison psychiatrist testified that Grant had never been treated for any mental illness or syndromes. Grant testified about his childhood, that he had eight brothers and sisters and that he left home, for the first time, at the age of twelve. He testified that he had been in and out of institutions since his teen years. He testified that when he reached the age of seventeen he was sentenced to adult prison and served one year. He testified that once he got out he committed the robberies for which he was incarcerated when this crime took place. He apologized to the family of the victim. The mitigating evidence Grant now claims his attorney was ineffective for not presenting would have repeated Grant’s own account of his childhood. Considering all of the evidence presented at trial and at the evidentiary hearing, we do not believe that trial counsel’s conduct was “outside the wide range of professionally c”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Grant v. Trammell

3. “waived” the presentation of mitigating family evidence simply by restating the claim repeatedly, though without support from the record. The lack of evidentiary support for this claim is discussed infra. . In order to grant this evidentiary hearing, this Court was required to find and did find that Grant had shown”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Grant v. State