Sowell v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1977
Citation profile
25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently March 2002 · most notably 438 So. 2d 380 - Lightbourne v. State (1983), 732 So. 2d 17 - Speed v. State (1999)
25 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. McHaney · 326 So. 2d 4 - O'DONNELL v. State · 316 So. 2d 537 - Owens v. State · Schmieder v. Leverenz · 300 So. 2d 70 - Owens v. State
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 25 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]here a sentence is one that has been established by the legislature and is not on its face cruel and unusual, it will be sustained when attacked on grounds of due process, equal protection, or separation of power theories. We do not find the mandatory three-year sentence provision to be cruel or unusual.”
3 later decisions 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.