Meyer v. Branker’s Empirical Analysis
506 F.3d 358 · 2007
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently March 2025
7 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 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. § 1291 · 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Apprendi v. New Jersey · Boykin v. Alabama · Williams v. Taylor · Hill v. Lockhart
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“For a guilty plea to be constitutionally valid, a defendant must be made aware of all the `direct,' but not the `collateral,' consequences of his plea.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“In the sentencing context, this “highly deferential” standard means that defense counsel have the flexibility to vary their approach given their client’s unique circumstances. See Lovitt v. True, 403 F.3d 171 , 179 (4th Cir.2005) (“In many cases, counsel’s decision not to pursue a particular approach at sentencing reflects not incompetence, but rather a sound strategic choice.”). This is exactly as it should be: the touchstone of effective representation must be sound, evidence-based judgment, rather than a set of mandates counsel must programmatically follow without deviation. “No particular set of detailed rules for counsel’s conduct can satisfactorily take account of the variety of circumstances faced by defense counsel or the range of legitimate decisions regarding how best to represent a criminal defendant.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 688-89 , 104 S.Ct. 2052 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Gray v. Branker“For this mitigating circumstance to exist it is enough that the defendant’s mind or emotions were disturbed from any cause and that he was under the influence of the disturbance when he killed the victim. You would find this mitigating circumstance if you find that the defendant was under mental or emotional stress as a result of his break up — the break up of the family marital unit and/or the mental or emotional stress of the hospitalization of his 82-year-old-blind mother and the uncertainty of her prognosis; and that as a result of this, the defendant was under the influence of mental or emotional disturbance when he killed the victim.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Gray v. Branker
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.