45 Md. App. 675 - Wilson v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently December 2003
15 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 41 Md. App. 514 - State v. White · 31 Md. App. 310 - Smith v. State · 44 Md. App. 1 - Wilson v. State · 17 Md. App. 316 - Dawson 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We believe the trial judge erred in denying relief and shall therefore grant this application for leave to appeal. In State v. White, 41 Md.App. 514 , 397 A.2d 299 (1979), we specifically held “to change a sentence from a concurrent one to a consecutive one is a modification upward.” Furthermore, Maryland Rule 774(b) [now Maryland Rule 4-345(b) ] clearly precludes the court from increasing the length of any sentence. See also Smith v. State, 31 Md.App. 310 , 356 A.2d 320 (1976). In the instant case the hearing judge concluded that White was distinguishable because, there, three different sentences were given by three different judges on three different occasions for three different crimes, whereas petitioner was sentenced by one judge on a single occasion. In our view this is exalting form over substance; it would seem to make little difference to a defendant whether he was being sentenced by three judges for three different crimes rather than a single judge on a single occasion. If a sentence is illegal, it is illegal and cannot be allowed to stand. The hearing judge also found that the totality of the sentences had to be looked at and, in doing so, if there was a reduction of the total, then there was no impropriety. We disagree. We believe each sentence must be viewed singly and if it is illegal, it cannot stand. Maryland Rule 774(b), by its terms, when referring to a sentence, consistently does so in the singular and makes no reference to multiple sentences. In our view t”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.