State v. Kiser’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “By applying a head-count analysis, we find that seven members of the Court supported a continued Eighth Amendment guarantee against disproportional sentences. Only four justices, however, supported the continued application of all three factors [outlined] in Solem , and five justices rejected it. Thus, this much is clear: disproportionality survives; Solem does not. Only Justice Kennedy’s opinion reflects [this] view. It is to his opinion, therefore, that we turn for direction. Accordingly, we will initially make a threshold comparison of the gravity of McGruder’s offenses against the severity of his sentence. Only if we infer that the sentence is grossly disproportionate to the offense will we then consider the remaining factors of the Solem test and compare the sentence received to (1) sentences for similar crimes in the same jurisdiction and (2) sentences for the same crime in other jurisdictions.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Brannon