Booker v. Wainwright’s Empirical Analysis
764 F.2d 1371 · 1985
Citation profile
30 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 52 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Wainwright v., Matter of Personal Restraint of Benn (1998)
30 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 state decisions
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.
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Wainwright v. Sykes · United States v. Frady · Sanders v. United States · Rideout v. United States · Proffitt v. Florida
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 52 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The question is whether the petitioner knew of the possibility of making such a claim, not whether he believed that the claim itself was meritorious. To excuse every petitioner who later raises a claim that he earlier believed lacked merit would be to carve out an exception for the very group of successive petitioners targeted by [Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1 [ 83 S.Ct. 1068 , 10 L.Ed.2d 148 ] (1963)] and Rule 9(b) — those petitions lacking serious merit, brought only for the purpose of delay or vexation. Furthermore, if courts were saddled with the task of deciding whether a prisoner had at one time believed the claim was insubstantial, a factor in ascertaining that belief would be the apparent merit of the claim itself. The very purpose of the abuse of the writ doctrine is to spare the judicial system the burden of exploring the merits of such claims.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“to excuse his (5th Cir. 1995) (concluding that petition asserting same ineffective assistance claims as prior petitions abused writ, despite petitioner's argument that the prior denial of those claims by the district court had not been appealed because of allegedly ineffective counsel's conflict). - 15 - failure to raise the ineffectiveness of counsel claim in his first federal habeas corpus petition,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Anderson v. Divris“that his habeas counsel deliberately prepared a petition which failed to challenge his trial performance, while actually believing that he had not provided effective assistance.”
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.