178 W. Va. 142 - State v. Deal’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2019
6 federal appellate · 11 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 Solem v. Helm · Spencer v. State of Texas a Bell · 167 W. Va. 830 - State v. Beck · 158 W. Va. 629 - State v. Dudick · 159 W. Va. 691 - State v. Milam
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The appropriateness of a life recidivist sentence under our constitutional proportionality provision found in Article III, Section 5, will be analyzed as follows: We give initial emphasis to the nature of the final offense which triggers the recidivist life sentence, although consideration is also given to the other underlying convictions. The primary analysis of these offenses is to determine if they involve actual or threatened violence to the person since crimes of this nature have traditionally carried the more serious penalties and therefore justify application of the recidivist statute.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“It shall be the duty of the prosecuting attorney when he has knowledge of former sentence or sentences to the penitentiary of any person convicted of an offense punishable by confinement in the penitentiary to give information thereof to the court immediately upon conviction and before sentence. Said court shall, before expiration of the term at which such person was convicted, cause such person or prisoner to be brought before it and upon an information filed by the prosecuting attorney.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“contains an express requirement of proportionality in sentencing which mandates a stricter review of recidivist sentencing than that required by the United States Supreme Court under federal constitutional principles.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Ramirez v. Castro
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.