Sims v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 12 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2015
10 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 Furman v. Georgia · Solem v. Helm · Enmund v. Florida · Rummel v. Estelle · Coker v. Georgia
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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(i) the gravity of the offense and the harshness of the penalty; (ii) the sentences imposed on other criminals in the same jurisdiction; and (iii) the sentences imposed for commission of the same crime in other jurisdictions.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Ewing v. California“I find it disheartening that the part of the criminal process that has the greatest ultimate effect on the defendantthe imposition of his or her sentenceis the part we decline to review.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissente.g. Tanksley v. State“[1] egislatures cannot create enough sentencing law to match the nuances of each crime and perpetrator, and thus they confer on their respective judiciaries some discretion in sentencing.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.