Williams v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1974
Citation profile
26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently March 2002 · most notably Hawkins v. State (1983), Mercado v. State (1981)
26 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
Relies on Giglio v. United States · Napue v. People of the State of Illinois · Mooney v. Holohan · Pyle v. State of Kansas · Miller v. Pate
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““For purposes of determining the effectiveness of an attorney’s representation, we have adopted the ‘reasonably effective’ assistance of counsel standard for use in this jurisdiction. We have also formulated reasonable and flexible rules in order to guide our application of this standard. “First, the sufficiency of an attorney’s assistance must be gauged by the totality of the representation of the accused. In our system of criminal justice an individual is entitled to a fair but not a perfect trial. Isolated failures to object to certain procedural mistakes or improper evidence do not constitute a breach of legal duty by an accused’s attorney. “We also observe that assertions of ineffective counsel shall be sustained only if they are ‘firmly founded.’ The record must affirmatively demonstrate the counsel’s ineffectiveness. “Finally, we are not in a position to ‘second guess,’ through appellate hindsight, the strategy adopted by counsel at trial. Trial lawyers occupy the realm of the here and now; they do not possess the luxury of a record to review, nor are they given time to formulate solutions to complex procedural or evidentiary issues in the midst of trial. The fact that another attorney may have pursued a different tactical course of trial is insufficient to support a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel. “ * * * Furthermore, the failure to object to every instance of improper evidence does not mean that appellant’s representation was ineffective. “ * * * Our du”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. Pierson v. State · Ex Parte Ewing
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.