Griffin v. McVicar’s Empirical Analysis
84 F.3d 880 · 1996
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently June 2023
6 federal appellate · 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
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Cuyler v. Sullivan · Holloway v. Arkansas · William Foxworth v. Louie L. Wainwright, Director, Division of Corrections · 67 Ill. 2d 1 - People v. Morgan
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In the face of the uncontradicted evidence placing Smith at the scene during the shootings, Griffin’s testifying to an alibi which involved Smith could do nothing but damage his own case. While a defense based on simply raising doubts about the credibility of the testimony implicating Griffin in the shootings might well have been unsuccessful, the joint alibi defense was nearly as weak as no defense at all. There was only the slimmest chance, if any, that a jury would believe the alibi in the face of the consistent eyewitness testimony placing Griffin and Smith at the scene of the murders. On the other hand, an attorney representing only Griffin could have impeached the identifications of Griffin as a shooter by exploiting obvious inconsistencies in testimony. The joint representation prevented [Griffin’s counsel] from exploiting the disparity in strength of the respective prosecution cases again Griffin and Smith. “ * * * It is often the unenviable job of defense counsel to choose among unpromising defenses. However, when an actual conflict of interest due to joint representation constrains an attorney to choose the hopeless in favor of the unpromising, the defendant has received ineffective assistance of counsel.” Id. at 890.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Gillard““ ‘As it was, [the attorney] only pointed to the inconsistencies and ambiguities as matters going to the credibility of the State’s witnesses. Counsel could not give Griffin the best possible defense under the circumstances because to do so would have been disloyal to Smith, his original client. Because of this conflict of loyalties, he remained silent when independent counsel would have spoken out on Griffin’s behalf.’ ” Id. at 885 , quoting People v. Griffin (1984), 124 Ill.App.3d 169, 181 , 79 Ill.Dec. 509, 518 , 463 N.E.2d 1063, 1072 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Gillard“plaintiff is to be released from custody, `unless the State of Illinois elects to retry [plaintiff] within [120] days from the issuance of this [c]ourt's final mandate.'”
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.