Ferrell v. Hall’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

26 federal appellate · 2 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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Under Strickland [a petitioner] must make two showings. First, he must show that his counsel’s performance was deficient, which means that it “fell below an objective standard of reasonableness” and was “outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance.” In deciding whether there was deficient performance, courts must review counsel’s actions in a “highly deferential” manner and “must indulge a strong presumption that counsel’s conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance.” To overcome Strickland’s presumption of reasonableness, [a petitioner] must show that “no competent counsel would have taken the action that his counsel did take.” The second showing required under Strickland is prejudice: the petitioner must also show that, but for his counsel’s deficient performance, there is a reasonable probability that the result of the proceeding would have been different — that is, our confidence in the outcome must be undermined by counsel’s deficient performance....”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Evans v. Secretary, Department of Corrections

2. “In other words, whether appellate counsel failed to properly challenge trial counsel’s mitigation inquiry focuses on essentially the same corpus of evidence and the same legal questions underlying trial counsel’s effectiveness — which strategies did trial counsel pursue, were those strategies reasonable under the circumstances, and what kinds of penalty phase evidence was developed, or could reasonably have been developed.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Butts v. GDCP Warden