Bult v. Leapley’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 25 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably State v. Bonner (1998), State v. McKinney (2005)
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 Gregg v. Georgia · Solem v. Helm · Boddie v. Connecticut · United States v. Tucker · Harmelin v. Michigan
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.
“First, is the punishment so excessive or so cruel, ‘as to meet the disapproval and condemnation of the conscience and reason of men generally.’ And second whether the punishment is so excessive or so cruel as to shock the collective conscience of this court.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Lemley · State v. Kaiser“[W]e recommend to the trial court that the maximum of life sentence be imposed only in such cases where it can determine from the facts of the principal offense and the previous convictions that rehabilitation is so unlikely as to be removed from consideration in sentencing; that the interests of society demand that the convict be kept off the streets for the rest of his life; and that society, speaking through the legislature, has clearly mandated that the offense or offenses involved are so malignant that a lifetime of incarceration is the only adequate retribution.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Bult · State v. Ramos“Any person convicted of a violation listed in § 22-22-1.2 shall have included in his presentence investigation report an assessment which shall include the following information: the offender's sexual history; intellectual, adaptive and academic functioning; social and emotional functioning; previous legal history; previous treatment history; victim selection; risk to the community; and treatment options recommended.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. State v. McKinney · State v. Hinger
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.