Mitchell v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate ·

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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[Defendants without education in the law or experience in its practice cannot be expected, unaided, to state accurately and clearly whatever claims for justice their cases might possess.... [W]e think it not unreasonable to postulate that discretionary review will be denied indigents in a significant number of cases where wealthier appellants, with the assistance of counsel, would have obtained review and possibly a reversal of the conviction on the merits.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Tesmer v. Granholm

2. “[T]o deny adequate review to the poor means that many of them may lose their life, liberty, or property because of unjust convictions which appellate courts would set aside.... There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has. Destitute defendants must be afforded as adequate [an] appellate review as defendants who have money enough to buy transcripts.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Tesmer v. Granholm