State v. St. Dennis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[P]ublie defenders who are subject to a common supervisory structure within an organization ordinarily should be treated as independent for purposes of [imputing conflicts of interest]. The lawyers provide legal services, not to the public defender office, but to individual defendants. Ordinarily, the office would have no reason to give one defendant more vigorous representation than other defendants whose interests are in conflict. Thus, while individual defendants should be represented by separate members of the defender’s office, the representation of each defendant should not be imputed to other lawyers in an office where effective measures prevent communications of confidential client information between lawyers employed on behalf of individual defendants. Similarly, there is no financial incentive for attorneys in a public defender’s office to favor one client over another. The public defender does not receive more money if one client prevails and another does not. An assistant public defender, as a salaried government employee, simply does not have the financial interest in a case that is inherent in private practice.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State of Iowa v. Lavelle Lonelle McKinley

2. “In deciding upon the approach to be taken in OPD [Office of Public Defender] conflict of interest cases, we consider among other factors the unique nature of public defender offices as opposed to private law firms. Unlike private law firms, the OPD is a not-for-profit public entity with a single source of clients engaged in a single type of legal proceeding. The OPD does not solicit clients or accept referrals from the public. Moreover, the attorneys are salaried employees rather than participants in the profits and revenue generated by a law firm. As such, their compensation is not driven by their success or failure.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State of Iowa v. Lavelle Lonelle McKinley