McKenzie v. Day’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

15 federal appellate · 2 district · 10 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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"A defendant must not be penalized for pursuing his constitutional rights, but he also should not be able to benefit from the ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of those rights. It would indeed be a mockery of justice if the delay incurred during the prosecution of claims that fail on the merits could itself acerue into a substantive claim to the very relief that had been sought and properly denied in the first place. If that were the law, death-row inmates would be able to avoid their sentences simply by delaying proceedings beyond some threshold amount of time, while other death-row inmates-less successful in their attempts to delay-would be forced to face their sentences. Such differential treatment would be far more 'arbitrary and unfair' and 'cruel and unusual than the current system of fulfilling sentences when the last in the line of appeals fails on the merits."”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Moore v. State · McKinney v. State

2. “We thus decline to recognize Richmond's lengthy incarceration on death row during the pendency of his appeals as substantively and independently violative of the Constitution”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. White v. Johnson