State v. Bruce’s Empirical Analysis
1966
Citation profile
135 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 137 later decisions — most recently February 2018 · most notably State v. Fulcher (1978), State v. Covington (1976)
135 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 Escobedo v. Illinois · Rogers v. Richmond · Maloy v. First Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n of West Palm Beach · State v. Rogers · State v. Lowry
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 137 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“. . The objection here is to the sentence of life imprisonment to run consecutively with a sentence of life imprisonment for rape, and not to the statute of kidnapping under which the sentence in the instant case was imposed. The sentence of life imprisonment for rape before Judge Stevens and the sentence of life imprisonment in the instant case [for kidnapping] to run consecutively with the sentence of life imprisonment for rape do not exceed the limits fixed by the statutes, and the sentence in the instant case is not cruel and unusual punishment in a constitutional sense. . . .””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Mitchell““ . . . ‘[O]ur system for the administration of justice through trial by jury is based upon the assumption that the trial jurors are men of character and of sufficient intelligence to fully understand and comply with the instructions of the court, and are presumed to have done so. Wilson v. Mfg. Co., 120 N.C. 94 , 26 S.E. 629 .’ Accord, State v. Bruce, 268 N.C. 174 , 150 S.E. 2d 216 ; 2 Strong, N. C. Index 2d Criminal Law § 96 (1967).””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Self““We have held in case after case that when the punishment does not exceed the limits fixed by the statute, it cannot be considered cruel and unusual punishment in a constitutional sense. S. v. Stansbury, 230 N.C. 589 , 55 S.E. 2d 185 ; S. v. Welch, 232 N.C. 77, 59 S.E. 2d 199 ; S. v. Whaley, 263 N.C. 824 , 140 S.E. 2d 305 ; S. v. Stubbs, 266 N.C. 295 , 145 S.E. 2d 899 ; S. v. Davis, 267 N.C. 126 , 147 S.E. 2d 570 ."”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Thomas
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.