2 Va. App. 342 - Duncan v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1986
Citation profile
52 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 52 later decisions — most recently October 2018 · most notably 9 Va. App. 298 - Bruce v. Commonwealth (1990), Jones v. Commonwealth (2017)
52 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 Padilla-Martinez v. United States · Bunting v. Commonwealth · Land v. Commonwealth · Boggs v. Commonwealth · Vines v. Muncy
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 52 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he punishment as fixed by the jury is not final or absolute, since its finding on the proper punishment is subject to suspension by the trial judge, in whole or in part, on the basis of any mitigating facts that the convicted defendant can marshal. The verdict of the jury is the fixing of maximum punishment which may be served. Under such practice, the convicted criminal defendant is entitled to “two decisions” on the sentence, one by the jury and the other by the trial judge in the exercise of his statutory right to suspend; his “ultimate sentence . . . does not [therefore] rest with the jury” alone but is always subject to the control of the trial judge. This procedure makes the jury’s finding little more than an advisory opinion or first-step decision. Any criticism of jury sentencing because it lacks the objectivity and principled decision of a judge is thus overcome by the existence of the power in the trial judge to bring his so-called superior judg ment to bear upon the issue of proper punishment in reaching his decision whether to suspend the sentence or not.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage“By vesting the trial court with discretionary authority to suspend or modify the sentence imposed by the jury, the legislature intended to leave the consideration of mitigating circumstances to the court. It is the court that has the responsibility of pronouncing the sentence after the maximum punishment is fixed by the jury.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[a] defendant introducing mitigating evidence at the guilt phase of a trial may be found to have put his character in issue,”
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.