Wainwright v. Torna’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
232 federal appellate · 48 district · 299 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 895 later decisions (23 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2025 · most notably Coleman v. Thompson (1991), Teague v. Lane (1989)
232 federal appellate · 48 district · 299 state decisions — followed in 32 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedPressley v. Wainwright (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Cuyler v. Sullivan · Ross v. Moffitt · Hill v. Mississippi · Sylvester v. State
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 895 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Since respondent had no constitutional right to counsel, he could not be deprived of the effective assistance of counsel by his retained counsel's failure to file the application timely.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Evitts v. Lucey · Thomas v. Nunes“Respondent was not denied due process of law by the fact that counsel deprived him of his right to petition the Florida Supreme Court for review. Such deprivation — if even implicating a due process interest — was caused by his counsel, and not by the State. Certainly, the actions of the Florida Supreme Court in dismissing an application for review that was not filed timely did not deprive respondent of due process of law.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“a defendant can only be deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel where there is a constitutional right to counsel[.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.