Hall v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

37 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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In reviewing the judgment of a post-conviction court, appellate courts consider only the evidence and reasonable inferences supporting its judgment. The post-conviction court is the sole judge of the evidence and the credibility of the witnesses. To prevail on appeal from denial of post-conviction relief, the petitioner must show that the evidence as a whole leads unerringly and unmistakably to a conclusion opposite to that reached by the post-conviction court.... Only where the evidence is without conflict and leads to but one conclusion, and the post-conviction court has reached the opposite conclusion, will its findings or conclusions be disturbed as being contrary to law.”

   8 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Alex Carrillo v. State of Indiana · Suarez v. State

2. “To import Boykin's presumption of invalidity into this very different context would, in our view, improperly ignore another presumption deeply rooted in our jurisprudence: the "presumption of regularity" that attaches to final judgments, even when the question is waiver of constitutional rights. Although we are perhaps most familiar with this principle in habeas corpus actions, it has long been applied equally to other forms of collateral attack. Respondent, by definition, collaterally attacked his previous convictions; he sought to deprive them of their normal force and effect in a proceeding that had an independent purpose other than to overturn the prior judgments. There is no good reason to suspend the presumption of regularity here. This is not a case in which an extant transcript is suspiciously "silent" on the question whether the defendant waived constitutional rights. Evidently, no transeripts or other records of the earlier plea colloquies exist at all. Transcripts of guilty plea proceedings are normally made in Kentucky only if a direct appeal is taken or upon the trial judge's specific direction and the stenographer's notes and any tapes made of the proceedings normally are not preserved more than five years. The circumstance of a missing or nonexistent record is, we suspect, not atypical, particularly when the prior conviction is several years old. But Boykin colloquies have been required for nearly a quarter century. On collateral review, we think it defies logi”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Damron

3. “The fact that the record of a guilty plea hearing can neither be found nor reconstructed does not of itself require granting post-conviction relief. Rather, as with any claim made in a petition for post-conviction relief, a claim that the petitioner's conviction was obtained in violation of federal or state constitutional safeguards ... must be proven by a preponderance of the evidence.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Damron