Cotto v. Herbert’s Empirical Analysis
331 F.3d 217 · 2003
Citation profile
66 federal appellate · 3 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 220 later decisions — most recently July 2025 · most notably Sira v. Morton (2004), State v. Hand (2006)
66 federal appellate · 3 district · 2 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Slack v. McDaniel · Miller-El v. Cockrell Director Texas Department of Criminal Justice Institutional Division · Chapman v. State of California · United States v. Olano · Williams v. Taylor
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 220 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) whether the alleged procedural violation was actually relied on in the trial court, and whether perfect compliance with the state rule would have changed the trial court’s decision; (2) whether state caselaw indicated that compliance with the rule was demanded in the specific circumstances presented; and (3) whether petitioner had “substantially complied” with the rule given “the realities of trial,” and, therefore, whether demanding perfect compliance with the rule would serve a legitimate governmental interest.”
32 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Garvey v. Duncan · Murden v. Artuz“[ujnder the “contrary to” clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ [only] if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by [the Supreme] Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than [the Supreme] Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts. Under the “unreasonable application” clause, a federal habeas court may grant the writ if the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from [the Supreme] Court’s decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner’s case.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“Although it is clear that the question is `whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable,' the precise method for distinguishing `objectively unreasonable' decisions from merely erroneous ones is less clear.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.