People v. Procito’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ Defendant committed the felony of robbery; he carried a weapon while committing that crime. All agree that, as a first offender, he is entitled to the clemency bestowed upon every first offender by section 2189 of the Penal Law and that the punishment imposed upon him by an indeterminate sentence for the felony of robbery is authorized. Whether section 1944 intends the imposition of a fixed or an indeterminate number of years as the additional punishment for a first offender is the issue before us. “ The Legislature has not expressly directed that the increased punishment shall be indeterminate. The inference that the legislative purpose was to add a fixed number of years to the maximum and the minimum of a sentence unspecified in length would not be unreasonable. Yet, when consideration is given to the fact that one who never previously had been convicted of a felony is intended to be favored by an indeterminate sentence, the inference that the purpose was to continue the extension of the favor and to assimilate the nature of the increased punishment with the punishment for the principal crime is probably more firmly grounded in reason. At least in those instances where the sentence must be indeterminate, did not the Legislature intend that the duration of the increased punishment also should be unspecified? Although construction of the statutes applicable to the state of facts presented by this record has been variable in the trial courts, the prevailing practice seems to”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. People ex rel. White v. Department of Correction