Woodfox v. Cain’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 federal appellate · 1 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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or (2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.”

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Hebert v. Rogers · Mejia v. Davis

2. “Claims that counsel failed to call witnesses are not favored on federal habeas review because the presentation of witnesses is generally a matter of trial strategy and speculation about what witnesses would have said on the stand is too uncertain. See Alexander v. McCotter, 775 F.2d 595, 602 (5th Cir.1985). For this reason, we require petitioners making claims of ineffective assistance based on counsel’s failure to call a witness to demonstrate prejudice by “nam[ing] the witness, demonstrat[ing] that the witness was available to testify and would have done so, set[ting] out the content of the witness’s proposed testimony, and showing] that the testimony would have been favorable to a particular defense.” Day v. Quarterman, 566 F.3d 527, 538 (5th Cir.2009). This requirement applies to both uncalled lay and expert witnesses. Id.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 783 F. Supp. 2d 905 - Ruiz v. Thaler

3. “This standard ... is difficult to meet. [C]learly established Federal law for purposes of § 2254(d)(1) includes only the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of this Court’s decisions. And an “unreasonable application of’ those holdings must be objectively unreasonable, not merely wrong; even “clear error” will not suffice. Rather, [a]s a condition for obtaining habeas corpus from a federal court, a state prisoner must show that the state court’s ruling on the claim being presented in federal court was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 602 F. App'x 939 - Licho Escamilla v. William Stephens, Director