Smith v. Cockrell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

24 federal appellate · 1 district · 8 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 62 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “We believe that what Pemy represents is a set of atypical circumstances of a kind that, quite understandably, neither the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals nor the Supreme Court in Jurek had in mind, namely circumstances where the defense's mitigating evidence would have either no substantial relevance or only adverse relevance to the second special issue. Typically, evidence of good character, or of transitory conditions such as youth or being under some particular emotional burden at the time, will tend to indicate that the crime in question is not truly representative of what the defendant’s normal behavior is or may become over time, and that the defendant may be reha-bilitatable so as not to be a continuing threat to society. The core of Jurek — which we cannot conclude has been abandoned— is that the mitigating force of this kind of evidence is adequately accounted for by the second special issue. But in Penry the Court was faced for the first time with a wholly different type of mitigating evidence. Not evidence of good character, but of bad character; not evidence of potential for rehabilitation, but of its absence; not evidence of a transitory condition, but of a permanent one; but nonetheless evidence which was strongly mitigating because these characteristics were due to the uniquely severe permanent handicaps with which the defendant was burdened through no fault of his own, mental retardation, organic brain damage and an abused childhood. There was no way this type”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Robertson v. Cockrell

2. “[t]he Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, to the extent that they are not inconsistent with any statutory provisions or these rules, may be applied to a proceeding under these rules.” Id. (emphasis added). Accordingly, 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (e) trumps Fed. R.Civ.P. 56 to the extent that the summary judgment standard conflicts with the AEDPA. Therefore, when the Washington Supreme Court entered a finding, the finding is presumed to be correct and Gentry has the burden to rebut the "presumption of correctness” by clear and convincing evidence. 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (e)(1). And, where Gentry failed to develop the factual basis of a claim in the state proceeding, he is not entitled to an evi-dentiary hearing unless, among other things, he shows that "the facts underlying the claim would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense.” Id. at § 2254(e)(2)(B). 6 .In Uttecht , the Supreme Court held that the trial court properly excused a juror for cause who equivocated about his ability to impose the death penalty and at times seemed confused about the law. Although the Supreme Court acknowledged that deference to the trial court "does not foreclose the possibility that a reviewing court may reverse the trial court's decision where the record discloses no basis for a finding of substantial impairment,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 576 F. Supp. 2d 1130 - Gentry v. Sinclair

3. “"[C]ounsel has a duty to make reasonable investigations or to make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary. In any ineffectiveness case, a particular decision not to investigate must be directly assessed for reasonableness in all the circumstances, applying a heavy measure of deference to counsel's judgments." Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691 , 104 S.Ct. 2052 . Furthermore, this court has stated that we "must be particularly wary of `arguments that essentially come down to a matter of degrees. Did counsel investigate enough? Did counsel present enough mitigating evidence? Those questions are even less susceptible to judicial second-guessing.'" Dowthitt v. Johnson, 230 F.3d 733, 743 (5th Cir.2000), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 915 , 121 S.Ct. 1250 , 149 L.Ed.2d 156 (2001) (quoting Kitchens v. Johnson, 190 F.3d 698, 703 (5th Cir. 1999)).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 879 So. 2d 423 - Bell v. State