Fryer v. Nix’s Empirical Analysis
775 F.2d 979 · 1985
Citation profile
27 federal appellate · 2 district · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently September 2018 · most notably State v. Gardner (2008), State v. Jennings (1990)
27 federal appellate · 2 district · 5 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 18 U.S.C. § 2313 · 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Jackson v. Virginia · Brady v. State of Maryland · United States v. Bagley · Jackson v. Denno
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 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he mere fact ... that an instruction could conceivably permit a jury to reach a non-unanimous verdict is not sufficient to require reversal when the jury has been instructed that it must reach a unanimous verdict.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"[P]roperly understood, our reference to interruption by independent circumstances rather than the will of the offender merely clarifies the requirement that the act be unequivocal. It is obviously impossible to be certain that a person will not lose his resolve to commit the crime unless he completes the last act necessary for its accomplishment. But the law of attempts would be largely without function if it could not be invoked until the trigger was pulled, the blow struck or the money seized. If it is not clear from a suspect’s acts what he intends to do, an observer cannot reasonably conclude that a crime will be committed; but when the acts are such that any rational person would believe that a crime is about to be consummated absent an intervening force, the attempt is under way, and a last-minute change of heart by the perpetrator should not be permitted to exonerate him.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“"The requirement that the act committed in furtherance of the crime be such that it render voluntary termination improbable does not enshrine a last-minute change of heart as a bar to a finding that an attempt was committed. Rather, such a requirement exists so that it is evident that the act committed be of an unequivocal nature: the act must be of such a nature that it is probable that the defendant intended to complete the crime. Once such an act is committed, the crime of attempt is complete, and later termination, though voluntary, is irrelevant.””
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.