Brown v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In Hodari and ... Wentz , the supreme court admonished this court not to interpret or apply benchmark ranges inflexibly. The [supreme] court stressed that any sentencing decision ultimately must be justified on the particular facts of a defendant’s offense and background, evaluated in light of the range of sentences authorized by the legislature for that offense. Thus, the supreme court warned, appellate courts should not “rely too heavily on appellate review to articulate sentencing principles and to fine-tune sentences [by] anticipating] what other factual situations might arise in the future [or by] fashioning] rules prospectively”. In Williams ..., this court responded to the supreme court’s concerns. We clarified that benchmark ranges were intended to serve only as “starting points” for sentencing analysis, not “hard and fast limits” on a judge’s sentencing discretion. We explicitly rejected the notion that sentencing judges could deviate from a benchmark range “only when certain specific, limited exceptions are established”. Rather, we stressed that a sentencing judge could properly rely on “any sound reason” to deviate up or down from the benchmark.”

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