Pryor v. School District No. 1

Oral argument

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Source: CourtListener oral-argument corpus (CC0).

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that in order to sustain a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel, a defendant must establish that “absent [counsel’s] errors, the factfinder would have had a reasonable doubt respecting guilt”
• “[Rjeliance on counsel’s competency [in totality as opposed to particular deficient respect] ... fail[s] to apply the Strickland standard at all.”
• “[E]ven strategic choices made after less than complete investigation do not amount to ineffective assistance—so long as the known facts made it reasonable to believe that further investigation was unnecessary.” (citing Strickland, 466 U.S. at 690–91)
• faulting counsel for failing to discover obvious discrepancy in dates
• “[I]n the absence of a contrary decision by this Court en banc, or an intervening Supreme Court decision, we are bound to follow the precedents set in [earlier cases] that the N.Y. Court of Appeals standard is not ‘contrary to’ Strickland.”
• “counsel must have ‘wide latitude’ in making tactical decisions”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).