Nance v. Ozmint’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In Cronic , the Court identified three distinct situations in which a presumption of prejudice is appropriate. First, prejudice is presumed when the defendant is completely denied counsel “at a critical stage of his trial.” Cronic, 466 U.S. at 659 , 104 S.Ct. 2039 , 80 L.Ed.2d 657 . Second, per-se prejudice occurs if there has been a constructive denial of counsel. This happens when a lawyer “entirely fails to subject the prosecution’s case to meaningful adversarial testing,” thus making “the adversary process itself presumptively unreliable.” Id. Third, the Court identified cer tain instances “when although counsel is available to assist the accused during trial, the likelihood that any lawyer, even a fully competent one, could provide effective assistance is so small that a presumption of prejudice is appropriate without inquiry into the actual conduct of the trial.” Id. (citing Poivell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 , 53 S.Ct. 55 , 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932)). A finding of per-se prejudice under any of these three prongs is “an extremely high showing for a criminal defendant to make.” Brown v. French, 147 F.3d 307, 313 (4th Cir.1998).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lorenzen v. State