Johnson v. Norris’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Mr. Smith believed that the religious beliefs of Roman Catholics would make them less likely to impose the death sentence. During the sentencing phase of the case, he appealed to what he supposed to be the jurors’ religious convictions. We assume for present purposes that this strategy, if it was worthy of the name, was seriously unprofessional. The assumption that every Roman Catholic is opposed to the death penalty, we think, is an unreasonable stereotype. The difficulty with the argument is that no prejudice can possibly be shown. We have no way of knowing who would have gotten on the jury if counsel had adopted a different strategy during voir dire, or if these hypothetical jurors would have been more favorable to petitioner. The same reasoning applies to counsel’s conduct in allowing three jurors to sit on petitioner’s jury who had served on a jury that returned a death sentence the previous week. We have no trouble agreeing that no reasonable lawyer would have allowed this to happen, at least without making some kind of a record. There is absolutely no showing, however, that the three jurors in question were unfair to .petitioner. We are unwilling to assume that someone who votes to sentence A to death will necessarily be inclined to impose the same sentence on B. The jurors’ previous service does show that they were willing to impose a death sentence, but jurors absolutely unwilling to impose such a penalty are not qualified to sit. Neither the “Catholic strategy” nor ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 151 F. Supp. 2d 1068 - Walters v. Maschner

2. “This is in many ways an unfortunate case. Petitioner has been sentenced to death. The lawyer who tried his case may have been mentally ill at the time, failed to press vigorously for the admission of certain defense testimony, and pursued unprofessional strategies during jury selection. We nevertheless are convinced that the governing law requires that this conviction and sentence be upheld. We deal in specific facts, not abstractions, and petitioner has failed to show any reasonable likelihood that the outcome of this case would have been different even if his lawyer had conducted himself perfectly. Accordingly, it is our duty to reject the petitioner’s three contentions on appeal, and the judgment of the District Court is affirmed.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 151 F. Supp. 2d 1068 - Walters v. Maschner

3. “[T]he petitioner must prove both that his attorney acted under an actual conflict of interest, as opposed to just a potential one, and that the conflict of interest actually affected the adequacy of the representation.”) (internal citations omitted). The Supreme Court in Mick-etts, however, clarified that the term”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Covey v. United States