Commonwealth v. LaChance’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 27 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 29 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[W]here the defendant has procedurally waived his Sixth Amendment public trial claim by not raising it at trial, and later raises the claim as one of ineffective assistance of counsel in a collateral attack on his conviction, the defendant is required to show prejudice from counsel's inadequate performance (that is, a substantial risk of a miscarriage of justice) and the presumption of prejudice that would otherwise apply to a preserved claim of structural error does not apply.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Pagan v. Vidal · 238 Md. App. 343 - State v. Thaniel

2. “To prevail on [such] a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, however, a defendant must also show that counsel's deficiency resulted in prejudice ... which, in the circumstances of counsel's failure to object to an error at trial, is essentially the same as the substantial risk standard we apply to unpreserved errors.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 92 Mass. App. Ct. 1115 - Commonwealth v. Spillane

3. “would tear the fabric of our well-established waiver jurisprudence ... and would defeat the core purposes of the waiver doctrine: to protect society's interest in the finality of its judicial decisions, and to promote judicial efficiency.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Robinson