King v. Morgan’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 federal appellate · 3 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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In the [Supreme] Court’s words: Where there is a new judgment intervening between the two habeas petitions, an application challenging the resulting new judgment is not “second or successive” at all. Because petitions seek the invalidation (in whole or in part) of the judgment authorizing the prisoner’s confinement, Magwood tells us, no part of the petition counts as second or successive as long as it is the first to, challenge the new judgment. That means that, if an initial federal habeas petition (or state-court collateral challenge) leads to an amended judgment, the first petition that follows the entry of the new judgment is not second or successive, even if it raises claims that the inmate could have raised in the first petition.... This judgment-based reasoning naturally applies to all new judgments, whether they capture neio sentences or new convictions or merely reinstate one or the other. Strengthening that inference is the reality that Magwood could have adopted a claims-based approach to the problem before it. The Court could have applied the second-petition rule on a claim-by-claim basis, separating the claims within a petition and deeming some successive and others not. But it declined. It reasoned that such an approach would not respect the language of the statute and thus would elide the difference between an “application” and a “claim,” a distinction that the statute makes important because AEDPA uses the phrase “second or successive” to modify “application.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Colie L. Long v. United States

2. “Some claims within a habeas application, it turns out, will apply to the underlying conviction and the new sentence. What then? Would the second-petition rule apply to one claim but not the other? That would make little sense and would be difficult to implement as well. Nor is this possibility merely theoretical. If the same judge presided over the original conviction and handled the resentencing, any challenge to the judge as adjudicator (e.g., for bias) would cover both proceedings. If the trial jury found facts applicable to the conviction and sentence, any challenge to the jury as adjudicator (e.g., voir dire problems, a Batson challenge, juror misconduct, consideration of improper evidence) would cover both. And if the government withheld exculpatory evidence until after the resentencing, a claim under Brady v. Maryland, could apply to both.... [Meanwhile, a] contrary approach ... would shortchange some prisoners whose incentives to challenge a conviction may differ after being resentenced. Suppose a defendant is convicted on two counts, and just one of them involves a constitutional error. If the defendant receives five-year concurrent sentences on both convictions, his incentives to challenge the defective conviction in his first habeas application [are] low; success on that challenge alone will not change his time in jail. If resentencing makes those five-year sentences consecutive, however, his incentives change considerably, because success now decreases his sentenc”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Colie L. Long v. United States

3. “could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re Caldwell