2006 Pa. Super. 331 - Commonwealth v. Leverette’s Empirical Analysis
2006
Citation profile
32 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 32 later decisions — most recently October 2024 · most notably 2008 Pa. Super. 250 - Commonwealth v. Williams (2008), 2008 Pa. Super. 235 - Commonwealth v. Morris (2008)
32 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 Commonwealth v. Grant · Commonwealth v. Bomar · Commonwealth v. Shiffler · Insurance Adjustment Bureau, Inc. v. Allstate Insurance · 2006 Pa. Super. 265 - Commonwealth v. Johnson
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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The scope and standard of review applied to determine the legality of a sentence are well established. If no statutory authorization exists for a particular sentence, that sentence is illegal and subject to correction. An illegal sentence must be vacated. In evaluating a trial court’s application of a statute, our standard of review is plenary and is limited to determining whether the trial court committed an error of law.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage“(a) Mandatory sentence. — Any person who is convicted of a violation of section 13(a)(30) of the act of April 14, 1972 (P.L. 233, No. 64), [35 P.S. § 780-113] known as The Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act, when at the time of the offense the person or the person’s accomplice is in physical possession or control of a firearm, whether visible, concealed about the person or the person’s accomplice or within the actor’s or accomplice’s reach or in close proximity to the controlled substance, shall likewise be sentenced to a minimum sentence of at least five years of total confinement.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“As to the recidivist philosophy, this and other Pennsylvania appellate courts have repeatedly recognized that, “the point of sentence enhancement is to punish more severely offenders who have persevered in criminal activity despite the theoretically beneficial effects of penal discipline.” Particularly salient here is the implicit link between enhanced punishment and behavioral reform, and the notion that the former should correspondingly increase along with a defendant’s foregone opportunities for the latter. Any other conception would ignore the rationale underlying the recidivist philosophy, ie., that the most culpable defendant is “one, who after being reproved, ‘still hardeneth his neck’.” Just as the second-time offender enhancement under subsection (a)(1) is meant to punish a defendant more severely when that defendant has offended before and has been afforded an opportunity to reform, so too is the third-time offender enhancement under subsection (a)(2), which increases the minimum punishment to twenty-five years, obviously meant to punish a defendant more severely when he has already foregone two opportunities to reform himself. The generally recognized purpose of such graduated sentencing laws is to punish offenses more severely when the defendant has exhibited an unwillingness to reform his miscreant ways and to conform his life according to the law.”
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.