State v. Spears’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
48 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently September 2016 · most notably State v. Clark (1989), State v. Canty (1988)
48 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 State v. Bondurant · State v. Jones · State v. Gardner
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A]lthough failure to find a statutory mitigating factor supported by uncontradicted, substantial and manifestly credible evidence is reversible error, a trial judge's consideration of a non-statutory factor which is (1) requested by the defendant, (2) proven by uncontradicted, substantial and manifestly credible evidence, and (3) mitigating in effect, is a matter entrusted to the sound discretion of the sentencing judge. ... Thus, [the trial court's] failure to find such a non-statutory mitigating factor will not be disturbed on appeal absent a showing of abuse of discretion.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Regarding non-statutory factors that are proven by a preponderance of the evidence and are reasonably related to the purposes of sentencing ... the trial judge may consider them, but such consideration is not required.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.