Smiley v. Wilson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

15 federal appellate · 4 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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “* * * Smiley alleged that his plea of guilty had been motivated by the giving of a coerced confession or incriminating statement. Although the existence of a coerced confession does not necessarily invalidate a conviction based upon a subsequent plea of guilty, the existence of such a confession is to be considered in determining the voluntariness of the plea if it is alleged that the confession motivated the plea. This being the case, the plea of guilty * * * does not preclude Smiley from raising the coercion argument in his habeas corpus petition as a basis for the averment that the plea of guilty was involuntary. * * * * * * * * * "In our opinion, neither an assumption nor a finding upon evidence that a defendant had competent counsel, warrants rejection, without a hearing, of an issue based upon an adequate factual allegation that a plea of guilty was primarily motivated by a confession obtained by physical or mental coercion. The adequacy of counsel and the voluntariness of a plea are not sufficiently interrelated so that the proof of the first establishes, as a matter of law, proof of the second. "It was therefore error to reject, on the basis of the pleadings, the coerced confession * * *.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Roach v. Bennett