Moore v. Bryant’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 federal appellate ·

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

1. “The final question is whether the state court acted unreasonably in determining otherwise. The state court rejected the ineffective assistance claim on two grounds. First, the court held that the trial court “thoroughly and completely admonished defendant as to the consequences of his guilty plea” and the “defendant’s responses to the court’s questions do not reveal any misunderstanding or hesitancy in his decision to plead guilty.” That observation by the court, however, is irrelevant to the issue presented here, which is whether the erroneous advice provided by counsel caused Moore to enter a plea he otherwise would not have entered, because it assumes that Moore was aware of the error in that advice at the time he entered the plea of guilty. If, as the record establishes, Moore was not aware that the sentence advice was erroneous, then his responses concerning the voluntariness of his plea and his acknowledgment of his rights do nothing to address the underlying problem. Nothing in that colloquy addressed whether his plea was based upon any predictions as to his sentence, nor did it otherwise alert Moore to the possibility that he was misinformed as to the choice he faced. Because nothing in the plea colloquy addressed the length of sentence or the impact of good-time credits that he was likely to face if he went to trial and lost, that sequence of questions did nothing to ameliorate the adverse impact of his counsel’s misinformation. The state court’s reliance on the plea”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 117 F. App'x 652 - Thomas v. Nelson

2. “We have identified the criteria that apply regarding an attorney’s advice concerning an offer of a plea agreement. A reasonably competent counsel will attempt to learn all of the facts of the case, make an estimate of a likely sentence, and communicate the results of that analysis before allowing his client to plead guilty.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 117 F. App'x 652 - Thomas v. Nelson

3. “there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Gish v. Dittmann