Williams v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently August 2014
3 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 Henderson v. Commonwealth · Nickell v. Commonwealth · Zachery v. Commonwealth · Newsome v. Commonwealth · Bronston v. Commonwealth
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.
“Appellant’s argument is that KRS 532.-080(4) provides that where a person serves concurrent terms of imprisonment, they shall be treated as one conviction for purposes of being a persistent felony offender. Appellant reads the statute to require this even when, as here, prison time has been served after the first conviction and the second crime is committed while on parole from the first conviction. ... Appellant’s suggested interpretation of KRS 532.080(4) would erode the purpose of the statute. Without analyzing the entire history and purposes of the statute, it is enough to say that the statute is designed to strengthen the Commonwealth’s attempts at rehabilitation of convicted persons. Greater penalties are sanctioned for those persons who, after serving a prison term for a conviction, demonstrate the futility of their rehabilitation by committing other crimes after their release. The concurrent sentence break is provided only to those who may have committed more than one crime but received their sentences for these crimes prior to serving any time in prison.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Since the persistent felony offender classification is one designed principally for individuals who have demonstrated lack of capacity for rehabilitation, the provision as a whole contains a change of direction in sentencing objectives, i.e., from rehabilitation of individual offenders to protection of the public by incapacitation of dangerous individuals.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“When an individual has been convicted two times before serving any time in prison, his convictions shall be considered a single conviction for purposes of this section. (Emphasis added.)”
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.