Cage v. McCaughtry’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate · 1 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “This amounts to asking whether the judge has an obligation to dismiss a juror for cause even if no lawyer objects .... The Supreme Court has never announced such a rule, and so it is not a ground upon which a state prisoner can obtain relief in a federal habeas corpus proceeding.... The absence of a case in the Supreme Court (or any other court, as far as we know) declaring such a rule is not surprising. There is nothing suspicious about a lawyer’s refusing to strike a prospective juror for cause. The lawyer might feel that on balance the juror was more likely to vote for than against his client. In the hearing conducted in the district court on the petitioner’s claim of ineffective assistance, his trial lawyer explained that he had thought that Werth was trying to get off having to serve on the jury, and that if he were left on against his will he would blame the government, which had instituted the case, and therefore be inclined to vote for an acquittal. Correct or not, this is the kind of reasoning that a criminal defendant wants his lawyer to engage in. A rule requiring the judge to exercise all challenges for cause would not serve criminal defendants and is hardly a plausible interpretation of the Sixth Amendment, let alone one endorsed by any decision of the Supreme Court.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Washington v. Thaler