State v. Herrera’s Empirical Analysis
1999
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently January 2026 · most notably Gardner v. Galetka (2009), State v. Houston (2015)
1 federal appellate · 30 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
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 17
Relies on United States v. Salerno · Solem v. Helm · Snyder v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts · Harmelin v. Michigan · Palko v. State of Connecticut
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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a] criminal punishment may be cruel and unusual when it is barbaric, excessive, or disproportional to the offense committed.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[ Albsent a showing that a particular punishment is 'eruelly inhumane or disproportionate,' we are not apt to substitute our judgment for that of the legislature regarding the wisdom of a particular punishment or of an entire sentencing scheme.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“if the punishment is so disproportionate to the offense committed that it shock{s] the moral sense of all reasonable men as to what is right and proper under the cireumstances.”
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.