People v. Hackett’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[The appellate projects] are under contract to the court; their contractual duties include review of the records to assist court-appointed counsel in identifying issues to brief. If the court-appointed counsel can find no meritorious issues to raise and decides to file a Wende brief, an appellate project staff attorney reviews the record again to determine whether a Wende brief is appropriate. Thus, by the time the Wende brief is filed in the Court of Appeal, the record in the case has been reviewed both by the court-appointed counsel (who is presumably well qualified to handle the case) and by an experienced attorney on the staff of [the appellate project].”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. George Smith Warden v. Lee Robbins

2. “Penson makes clear, Wende seems to miss the point of Anders . The essential point of Anders and its progeny is advocacy, i.e., the necessity for indigent convicted criminal defendants to have available to them a constitutionally acceptable level of appellate advocacy. Wende substitutes for that a `form' brief (complete with a `form' declaration of counsel) followed by an `independent review' by the court and its staff of the record and then maybe more effort by the appointed appellate attorney.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In Re Kayla G.

3. “The paramount importance of vigorous representation follows from the nature of our adversarial system of justice.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. George Smith Warden v. Lee Robbins