State v. Garber’s Empirical Analysis
2004
Citation profile
35 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 35 later decisions — most recently March 2025 · most notably State v. Brim (2010), State v. Rice (2016)
35 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 Harmelin v. Michigan · Estelle v. Smith · Minnesota v. Murphy · Rogers v. United States · Brown 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 35 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]o assess a challenge to proportionality we first determine whether the sentence appears grossly disproportionate. To accomplish this, we consider the conduct involved, and any relevant past conduct, with utmost deference to the Legislature and the sentencing court. If these circumstances fail to suggest gross disproportionality our review ends. If, on the other hand, the sentence appears grossly disproportionate, we may, in addition to examining the other Solem factors, conduct an intra- and inter-jurisdictional analysis to aid our comparison or remand to the circuit court to conduct such comparison before resentencing. We may also consider other relevant factors, such as the effect upon society of this type of offense.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“An appropriate sentence requires that: “the sentencing court should ‘acquire a thorough acquaintance with the character and history of the man before it.’ This study should examine the defendant’s ‘general moral character, mentality, habits, social environment, tendencies, age, aversion or inclination to commit crime, life, family, occupation, and previous criminal record.’ ””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Brim“It is well-settled that we employ very limited principles in our constitutional review of sentences. These principles include giving `substantial deference' to the legislature's broad authority to determine the types and limits of punishment; and the notion that `the Eighth Amendment does not mandate adoption of any one penological theory.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Iannarelli
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.