Downs v. McNeil’s Empirical Analysis
520 F.3d 1311 · 2008
Citation profile
15 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently March 2021 · most notably United States v. Munoz (2010), Doe v. Busby (2011)
15 federal appellate · 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 18 U.S.C. § 3599 · 28 U.S.C. § 2244 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) · 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 Brady v. State of Maryland · Gideon v. Wainwright · Coleman v. Thompson · Murray v. Carrier · Pioneer Investment Services Company v. Brunswick Associates Limited Partnership
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Respondents urge this Court to ... hold[ ] that a client is always bound by the mistakes of his attorney, regardless how extreme or far afield from the client’s directives those actions may be.... [This] “your lawyer, your fault” approach is consistent with the general principle [expounded in Pioneer] that lawyers are agents, and “clients must be held accountable for the acts and omissions of their attorneys.” [However,] under fundamental tenets of agency law, a principal is not charged with an agent’s actions or knowledge when the agent is acting adversely to the principal’s interests.... [Thus,] when an attorney’s actions extend beyond everyday mistakes into the realm of serious misconduct, ... in some circumstances such malfeasance may be far enough outside the range of behavior that reasonably could be expected by a client ... [that it would be inappropriate to] impute [such] attorney misconduct to [the] client....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““ ‘Due diligence ... does not require a prisoner to undertake repeated exercises in futility or to exhaust every imaginable option, but rather to make,reasonable efforts.’ Aron v. United States, 291 F.3d 708, 712 (11th Cir. 2002). ‘Moreover, the due diligence inquiry is an individualized one that must take into account the conditions of confinement and the reality of the prison system.’ Id. (internal quotations omitted).””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Ward v. State“[Downs’s] unequivocal, repeated demands that his attorneys file his habeas petition; his close tracking of his attorneys’ work and the applicable federal deadlines; and his counsel’s overt deception in representing they had filed a tolling petition in state court when they had not in fact done so, thereby depriving him of several months of his statutorily-guaranteed one-year federal limitations period.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.