Turrentine v. Mullin’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

37 federal appellate · 1 district · 9 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 95 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim— (1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or (2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Bland v. Sirmons · Young v. Sirmons

2. “complete absence of meaningful adversarial testing only where the evidence `overwhelmingly established that [the] attorney abandoned the required duty of loyalty to his client,' and where counsel `acted with reckless disregard for his client's best interests and, at times, apparently with the intention to weaken his client's case.'”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Menzies v. Galetka · United States v. Collins

3. “[DJefense counsel was faced with overwhelming evidence establishing [the prisoner's] guilt, including foremost [his] own videotaped confession describing in detail his participation in these horrific crimes ... And defense counsel did pursue pretrial motions on [the prisoner's] behalf, cross-examined the State's witnesses, made evidentiary objections at trial and asserted in [the prisoner's] defense the minimal evidence available indicating that [he] might have been intoxicated at the time of the crimes ... Trial counsel's apparent strategy was to maintain credibility with the jury during the first stage so that he could strongly pursue a sentence less than death during the penalty phase. And counsel did fully assert a case in mitigation during the trial's capital-sentencing stage.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Grissom v. State