Wright v. Nix’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 federal appellate · 1 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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[Wright] has not shown that the individual jurors who tried him were not impartial, and, as already noted, he has not even begun to show that the presence of the black juror[s] in question on the jury' that tried him would have affected the outcome at all. It is in the sense of outcome, I submit, that the Strickland Court used the term “prejudice.” The focus is on the outcome of the individual trial. Is there a reasonable likelihood that it would have been different? Here, I am persuaded that there is no such likelihood, and I therefore agree that this judgment should be affirmed.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Young v. Bowersox · Mose Young v. Michael Bowersox

2. ““With respect to prejudice, Wright has argued ... that requiring defendants to show prejudice by showing the likelihood of a different outcome asks of them the impossible. That is, how can Wright ever show that if a different jury had been seated it would have acquitted him? Wright suggests he should have to show only that a different, impartial jury would have been seated in order to demonstrate prejudice. We disagree because ‘[a]n error by counsel, even if professionally unreasonable, does not warrant setting aside the judgment of a criminal proceeding if the error had no effect on the judgment.’ Strickland, 466 U.S. at 691 , 104 S.Ct. at 2066 .””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Benjamin v. State