Rocha v. Thaler’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““[t]he materiality of Brady material depends almost entirely on the value of the evidence relative to the other evidence mustered by the state.” Suppressed evidence that would be cumulative of other evidence or would be used to impeach testimony of a witness whose account is strongly corroborated is generally not considered material for Brady purposes. Conversely, however, undisclosed evidence that would seriously undermine the testimony of a key witness may be considered material when it relates to an essential issue or the testimony lacks strong corroboration.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Georgiou · Murphy v. Davis

2. “When a claim of actual innocence contests a sentence of death, the habeas petitioner’s claim must tend to negate not just the jury’s discretion to impose a death sentence but the petitioner’s very eligibility for that punishment. That is, a habeas petitioner who is unquestionably eligible for the sentence received can never be actually innocent of the death penalty. This is so because late-arriving constitutional error that impacted only a jury’s sentencing discretion is not sufficiently fundamental as to excuse the failure to raise it timely in prior state and federal proceedings. The actual innocence requirement must, then, focus on those elements that render a defendant eligible for the death penalty, and not on additional mitigating evidence that was prevented from being introduced as a result of a claimed constitutional error.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Carlos Trevino v. Rick Thaler, Director

3. “Texas largely adopted this federal gateway in crafting its own conditions for subsequent habeas applications. As the [Court of Criminal Appeals] has explained, “[t]he [Texas] Legislature quite obviously intended [§ 5(a)(3)], at least in some measure, to mimic the federal doctrine of ‘fundamental miscarriage of justice.’ ... apparently intending to codify, more or less, the [actual-innocence-of-the-death-penalty] doctrine found in Sawyer v. Whitley[, 505 U.S. 333 , 112 S.Ct. 2514 , 120 L.Ed.2d 269 (1992)].””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Balentine v. Thaler