Thomas v. Foltz’s Empirical Analysis
818 F.2d 476 · 1987
Citation profile
89 federal appellate · 1 district · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 140 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably Frazer v. United States (1994), Moss v. United States (2003)
89 federal appellate · 1 district · 15 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 Strickland v. Washington · North Carolina v. Alford · Hill v. Lockhart · Cuyler v. Sullivan · Holloway v. Arkansas
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 140 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'an actual conflict of interest adversely affected [the] lawyer's performance.'”
20 later decisions quote this exact passage“made a choice between possible alternative courses of action, such as eliciting (or failing to elicit) evidence helpful to one client but harmful to the other. If he did not make such a choice, the conflict remained hypothetical.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage“Joint representation of conflicting interests is suspect because of what it tends to prevent the attorney from doing ... the evil — it bears repeating — -is in what the advocate finds himself compelled to refrain from doing, not only at trial but also as to possible pretrial plea negotia tions and in the sentencing process.... The mere physical presence of an attorney does not fulfill the Sixth Amendment guarantee when the advocate’s conflicting obligations have effectively sealed his lips on crucial matters.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.