Stewart v. Wolfenbarger’s Empirical Analysis
468 F.3d 338 · 2006
Citation profile
18 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently March 2025 · most notably Brown v. Smith (2008), United States v. Munoz (2010)
18 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 state decisions
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.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) · 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Williams v. Taylor · Delaware v. Van Arsdall · Cuyler v. Sullivan · Delaware v. Fensterer
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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome, ... but something less than a showing that the outcome more likely than not would have been different .... While the petitioner need not conclusively demonstrate his actual innocence, ... the focus should be on whether the result of the trial was fundamentally unfair or unreliable ...”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Strategic choices made after less than complete investigation are reasonable precisely to the extent that reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation. In other words, counsel has a duty to make reasonable investigations or to make a reasonable decision that makes particular investigations unnecessary. In any ineffectiveness case, a particular decision not to investigate must be directly assessed for reasonableness in all the circumstances, applying a heavy measure of deference to counsel’s judgments.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Avery v. Prelesnik“[I]t is highly speculative that [an accomplice] would have incriminated himself or otherwise cast suspicion on himself, while at the same time decreasing the suspicion on Petitioner, if he testified at Petitioner's trial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Stojetz v. Ishee
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.