Torres v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 6 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Torres correctly notes that customs of practice for capital defense attorneys have evolved since his trial. During testimony and argument, Torres relied on the American Bar Association guidelines for minimum standards of counsel in capital cases, arguing that trial counsel’s performance as described above failed to meet those standards. As early as 1984, the United States Supreme Court recognized the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice for defense counsel, noting that these are only guidelines and declining to adopt them as a set of formal rules of representation. We also recognize the utility of guidelines for effective capital counsel. However, we will not find that capital counsel was per se ineffective simply because simply counsel’s representation differed from current capital practice customs, even where the differences are significant. A defendant must still show that he was prejudiced by counsel’s representation.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Coddington v. State · 43 So. 3d 1258 - Jones v. State