State v. Wright’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

28 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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The listed factors justifying mitigation or aggravation focus primarily on the degree of the defendant’s culpability. The justification given by the trial court focused more on defendant as an individual and whether the presumptive sentence would be best for him and for society. In State v. Garcia, 302 N.W.2d 643 (Minn.1981), the first decision of this court interpreting the Sentencing Guidelines, we upheld an upward departure (longer sentence and refusal to stay execution) based on strong evidence that the defendant in that case had treated the victim in a particularly cruel way and that the defendant was particularly unamenable to probation. To the same effect on una-menability, see State v. Park, 305 N.W.2d 775 (Minn.1981). This is the other side of unamenability to probation — that is, defendant is particularly unamenable to incarceration and particularly amenable to individualized treatment in a probationary setting.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. King