State v. Freeman’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 17 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Finally, the defendant insists that the Tennessee Habitual Criminal Statute is unconstitutional, citing Solem v. Helm, — U.S.-, 103 S.Ct. 3001 [ 77 L.Ed.2d 637 ] (1983). We first observe that Solem did not hold the South Dakota Habitual Criminal Statute to be repugnant to the Eighth Amendment, as cruel and unusual punishment, as insisted by the defendant. The court went no further than to hold that the South Dakota Habitual Criminal Statute was unconstitutional as applied in that particular case. In the Solem case, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed its holding in Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263 , 63 L.Ed.2d 382 , 100 S.Ct. 1133 (1980). In both cases, the defendants had been convicted only of non-violent crimes and both cases recognized that a State is justified in punishing a recidivist more severely than it punishes a first offender. In reversing Solem’s conviction, the court emphasized that South Dakota’s recidivist statute was more severe than that of any other state. It provided that when the defendant had been previously convicted of any three felonies, in addition to the principal felony, the sentence for the principal felony is enhanced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. By comparison, the Texas statute, with which the court was concerned in Rummel , provided that upon a third conviction of any felony, the defendant’s life sentence could be paroled after 12 years. The Tennessee statute does not define an habitual criminal as one who has been ”

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