State v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
322 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 322 later decisions — most recently August 2023 · most notably State v. Burnight (1999), State v. Sheahan (2003)
322 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Solem v. Helm · Harmelin v. Michigan · Estelle v. Smith · State v. Hedger
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 322 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“show that in light of the governing criteria, [his] sentence was excessive under any reasonable view of the facts.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Amerson · State v. Pratt“We limit our proportionality analysis to death penalty cases and, under the Idaho Constitution ... to those cases which are “out of proportion to the gravity of the offense committed” in the cruel and unusual punishment setting similar to the “grossly disproportionate” analysis of the [Ejighth [A]mendment urged by Justices Kennedy, O’Connor, and Souter in Harmelin.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Moore · State v. Toney“[A] fixed life sentence may be deemed reasonable if the offense is so egregious that it demands an exceptionally severe measure of retribution and deterrence, or if the offender so utterly lacks rehabilitative potential that imprisonment until death is the only feasible means of protecting society. Unfortunately, in making these determinations, a judge has complete information only in regard to retribution and deterrence, which are based on the nature of the offense. The character of the offender is not completely known because it may evolve over time. The judge must attempt to predict the defendant’s future response to rehabilitative programs and the degree of risk he might pose to society if eventually released. In our view, a fixed life sentence should not be regarded as a judicial hedge against uncertainty. To the contrary, a fixed life term, with its rigid preclusion of parole or good time, should be regarded as a sentence requiring a high degree of certainty — certainty that the nature of the crime demands incarceration until the perpetrator dies in prison, or certainty that the perpetrator never, at any time in his life, could be safely released.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Priest
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.