Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

127 Wash. 2d 628

State v. Pirtle

Washington Supreme Court

Decided October 12, 1995

Washington Supreme Court · decided 1995-10-12

Relies on Yagow v. United States · Payless Wholesale Distributor, Inc. v. Albert Culver (P.R.) Inc. · Woodcock v. Chemical Bank

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1995-10-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 116 later decisions — most recently July 2019 · most notably Jeffries v. Wood (1997), Folsom v. Burger King (1998)

3 federal appellate · 112 state decisions

810199520002010decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Durham, C.J.

¶1(concurring) — "In virtually every recent death penalty case decided by this court, a different definition of proportionality has been promulgated. The resulting confusion is unacceptable.” State v. Brett, 126 Wn.2d 136, 214-15, 892 P.2d 29 (1995) (Durham, C.J., concurring). Once again, the majority feels compelled to tinker with what is perhaps the most over-analyzed area of death penalty review, this time purporting to build upon an analysis which was not adopted by a majority of this court.

¶2*690In State v. Lord, 117 Wn.2d 829, 822 P.2d 177 (1991), cert. denied, 113 S. Ct. 164 (1992), we articulated the "family resemblances” test. This approach determines proportionality by comparing the case under review with similar cases, recognizing that not all cases in which the death penalty has been imposed share a set of particular attributes. Lord, 117 Wn.2d at 911. This approach was followed in State v. Dodd, 120 Wn.2d 1, 838 P.2d 86 (1992), and State v. Gentry, 125 Wn.2d 570, 888 P.2d 1105, cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 131, 133 L. Ed. 2d 79 (1995). The departures from this approach in State v. Benn, 120 Wn.2d 631, 845 P.2d 289, cert. denied, 114 S. Ct. 382 (1993) and Brettdid not garner a majority of votes. As I indicated in my concurrence in Brett, the court’s endlessly varying proportionality analysis is itself an obstacle to ensuring proportionality.

¶3Reconsideration denied January 19, 1996.

/127/wash2d/628 · .json · Public domain