Hamblin v. Mitchell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

71 federal appellate · 1 district · 12 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 102 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Because the sentences in a capital case must consider in mitigation, anything in the life of the defendant which might militate against the appropriateness of the death penalty for the defendant, penalty phase preparation requires extensive and generally unparalleled investigation into personal and family history. In the ease of the client, this begins with the moment of conception [i.e., undertaking representation of the capital defendant]. Counsel needs to explore: ©Medical history, (including hospitalizations, mental and physical illness or injury, alcohol and drug use, pre-natal and birth trauma, malnutrition, developmental delays, and neurological damage). ©Family and social history, (including physical, sexual or emotional abuse; family history of mental illness, cognitive impairments, substance abuse, or domestic violence; poverty, familial instability, neighborhood environment and peer influence); other traumatic events such as exposure to criminal violence, the loss of a loved one or a natural disaster; experiences of racism or other social or ethnic bias; cultural or religious influences; failures of government or social intervention (e.g., failure to intervene or provide necessary services, placement in poor quality foster care or juvenile detention facilities); ©Educational history (including achievement, performance, behavior, and activities), special educational needs (including cognitive limitations and learning disabilities) and opportunity or lack thereof, an”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Dickerson v. Bagley · Hartman v. Bagley

2. “... [A] codification of longstanding, common-sense principles of representation understood by diligent, competent counsel in death penalty cases. The ABA standards are not aspirational in the sense that they represent norms newly discovered after Strickland. They are the same type of longstanding norms referred to in Strickland in 1984 as “prevailing professional norms” as “guided” by “American Bar Association standards and the like.” ... The Court in Wiggins clearly holds ... that it is not making “new law” on the ineffective assistance of counsel either in Wiggins or in the earlier case on which it relied for its standards, Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362 [, 120 S.Ct. 1495 , 146 L.Ed.2d 389 ] ... (2000).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 635 F. Supp. 2d 680 - Moreland v. Bradshaw

3. “strategic choices made after thorough investigation of law and facts relevant to plausible options are virtually unchallengeable; and strategic choices made after less than complete investigation are reasonable precisely to the extent that reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation. In other words, counsel 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.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Slaughter v. Parker