196 W. Va. 71 - State v. Sears’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 44 later decisions — most recently November 2017 · most notably 197 W. Va. 575 - State v. Johnson (1996), 203 W. Va. 631 - State v. Easton (1998)
44 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 Blockburger v. United States · Missouri v. Hunter · United States v. Halper · United States v. Dixon · Whalen 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 44 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In ascertaining legislative intent, a court should look initially at the language of the involved statutes and, if necessary, the legislative history to determine if the legislature has made a clear expression of its intention to aggregate sentences for related crimes. If no such clear legislative intent can be discerned, then the court should analyze the statutes under the test set forth in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299 , 52 S.Ct. 180 , 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932), to determine whether each offense requires an element of proof the other does not. If there is an element of proof that is different, then the presumption is that the legislature intended to create separate offenses.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“[t]he scope of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the Federal Constitution is at least coextensive with that of the Double Jeopardy Clause in the West Virginia Constitution.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[T]he presumption is that double jeopardy principles have been violated unless there is a clear and definite statement of intent by the Legislature that cumulative punishment is permissible.”
1 later decision 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.