Winston v. Kelly’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate ·

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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The court is aware of and sensitive to the difficulties and burdens capital trial counsel must frequently shoulder. It is essential that they be able to delegate certain tasks and rely on expert opinions with confidence. Cf. Wilson v. Greene, 155 F.3d 396, 403 (4th Cir.1998) (observing that, where counsel had received a psychologist’s opinion that defendant was not mentally ill at time of offense, “counsel was not required to second-guess the contents of this report,” but rather “understandably decided not to spend valuable time pursuing what appeared to be an unfruitful line of investigation.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). However, capital trial counsel cannot outsource their fundamental responsibilities.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 784 F. Supp. 2d 623 - Winston v. Kelly

2. “If I had noticed this record before trial, I certainly would have pointed it out to Dr. Nelson and followed-up on this information. I would have challenged his conclusion regarding mental retardation, particularly because the school record indicates [Winston] had adaptive deficits prior to age 18. This record would have been very valuable to us because it was documentation the Commonwealth diagnosed [Winston] with mental retardation as a child.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 784 F. Supp. 2d 623 - Winston v. Kelly