173 W. Va. 243 - State v. Buck’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
38 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently March 2015 · most notably 174 W. Va. 767 - State v. Collins (1985), 177 W. Va. 650 - State v. Glover (1987)
38 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 United States v. Robin · Yates v. United States · 41 Ill. 2d 297 - The People v. Adkins · Blunt v. United States · Diehl v. Lehigh Valley Railroad
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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Disparate sentences for codefendants are not per se unconstitutional. Courts consider many factors such as each code-fendant’s respective involvement in the criminal transaction (including who was the prime mover), prior records, rehabilitative potential (including post-arrest conduct, age and maturity), and lack of remorse. If codefendants are similarly situated, some courts will reverse on disparity of sentence alone.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage““ ‘Punishment may be constitutionally impermissible, although not cruel or unusual in its method, if it is so disproportionate to the crime for which it is inflicted that it shocks the conscience and offends fundamental notions of human dignity, thereby violating West Virginia Constitution, Article III, Section 5 that prohibits a penalty that is not proportionate to the character and degree of an offense.’ Syllabus Point 5, State v. Cooper, 172 W.Va. 266 , 304 S.E.2d 851 (1983).””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Article III, Section 5 of the West Virginia Constitution, which contains the cruel and unusual punishment counterpart to the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, has an express statement of the proportionality principle: “Penalties shall be proportioned to the character and degree of the offense.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.