Libberton v. Ryan’s Empirical Analysis
583 F.3d 1147 · 2009
Citation profile
7 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 14 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025
7 federal appellate ·
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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2253 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996) · 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Brady v. State of Maryland · Williams v. Taylor · Giglio v. United States · Kyles v. Whitley
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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“I’m offering you absolutely nothing today except that [ ] I’m not going to use any of the statements that you make today against you.... The end result of this interview with you is that we are going to attempt to set up an agreement between you, your attorney and the county attorney’s office regarding the charges that are now pending against you in the death of [Maya]. None of that has been put down in writing at this time, and in fact we haven’t even explored what those possibilities may be. It will all depend on your truthfulness during this interview today.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. James v. Schriro · James v. Ryan“was just going uh uh breathing really hard and rapidly and [Libberton] put the gun about 10 inches from his head and pulled the trigger. [Maya] wasn’t breathing anymore. A gurgling sound started coming out. Steve didn’t know what was going on. That son of a bitch ain’t dead yet. So [James] picked up a real heavy rock, it was heavy because he barely put it up and slammed it down on [Maya’s] head. ... [T]hen [Libberton] picked up the same rock and put it on his head. Then I picked up the same rock and threw it on his head.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. James v. Schriro · James v. Ryan““[A] common shorthand for [this] claim is ‘ineffective assistance during the penalty phase.’ If taken literally, this shorthand is misleading. The question is whether a defendant’s counsel was ineffective with respect to the penalty imposed, irrespective of when during the proceedings the counsel was ineffective. It is often the ease that a counsel’s ineffectiveness is manifested during the penalty phase, as the common shorthand suggests. For example, defense counsel may have failed to discover a witness who would have testified favorably during the penalty phase. But ineffectiveness is often manifested earlier. For example, defense counsel may have failed to discover impeaching evidence that could have been used against an unfavorable witness who testified during the guilt phase, and which would have portrayed the defendant in a light that would have assisted him at the penalty phase.” Libberton v. Ryan, 583 F.3d 1147, 1166 (9th Cir.2009).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.