State v. Webb’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

263 state decisions

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 264 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[(Consideration of cases in which the State, for whatever reasons, did not seek the death penalty would necessarily require us to scrutinize what is ultimately a discretionary prosecutorial decision. We previously have declined to review the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, and it would be particularly inappropriate to do so in conducting comparative proportionality review, where our function is limited to identifying aberrant death sentences, not identifying potential capital cases. Consideration of cases in which the State did not seek the death penalty, in effect, would be using a prior decision of the State as a basis for invalidating a death penalty in an unrelated case. Such a course could potentially discourage the State both from exercising its discretion to not seek the death penalty and from engaging in plea bargaining with a defendant charged with first degree murder. Indeed, such a course could result in the State seeking the ultimate penalty in every first degree murder case. Proportionality review is not, and was never intended to be, a vehicle for reviewing the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. For these reasons, we do not consider cases in which the State did not seek the death penalty when conducting comparative proportionality review.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. State of Tennessee v. Corinio Pruitt