United States v. Pridgeon’s Empirical Analysis
153 U.S. 48 · 1894
Citation profile
225 federal appellate · 30 district · 82 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 446 later decisions (32 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably Weems v. United States (1910), Peyton v. Rowe (1968)
225 federal appellate · 30 district · 82 state decisions — followed in 24 states
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedthe decision below (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Ex parte Lange · Kan-Gi-Shun-Ca · Coy · Dobbins's Distillery v. United States
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 446 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“* * * It is a recognized doctrine of frequent enunciation that where a court has jurisdiction of the accused and of the offense charged, the imposition of a sentence in excess of that which the law permits does not render the authorized portion of the sentence void if the excess is separable from the residue and may be reached without disturbing the portion which is legal. * * *”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Under a writ of habeas corpus, the Inquiry Is addressed, not to errors, but to the question whether the proceedings and the judgment rendered therein are for any reason nullities; and, unless it is affirmatively shown that the judgment or sentence under which the petitioner is confined is void, he is not entitled to his discharge.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““An offense which the statute imperatively requires to be punished by imprisonment ‘at hard labor,’ and one that must be punished by ‘imprisonment,’ but the sentence to which imprisonment the court mayj in certain cases, and in its discretion, require to be executed in a penitentiary where hard labor is prescribed for convicts, are, each, ‘punishable’ by imprisonment at hard labor. The former offense certainly must be thus punished; and as the latter may, in the discretion of the court, be so punished, it may, also, and not unreasonably, be held to be ‘punishable’ by imprisonment at hard labor.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.