State v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “. ^Louisiana's judiciary maintains the distinct responsibility of reviewing sentences imposed in criminal cases for constitutional excessiveness. State v. Sepulvado, 367 So.2d 762 (La.1979). However, in order to find the punishment mandated by La.R.S. 15:529.1 excessive, the trial judge must find that the sentence makes no measurable contribution to the acceptable goals of punishment or that the sentence amounts to nothing more than the purposeful imposition of pain and suffering and is grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime. State v. Dorthey, 623 So.2d 1276 (La.1993). Although the trial judge gave reasons for his sentence, it does not appear that he made a sufficient showing on the record to say that the imposition of the statutorily mandated minimum sentence would be constitutionally excessive under these facts. Moreover, even assuming the statuT torily-mandated minimum sentence was excessive under these facts, the trial judge failed to justify his reduction of the sentence down to thirty months. See State v. Gordon, 96-0427 (La.5/10/96), 672 So.2d 669 . Accordingly, the judgment of the trial court is vacated and the case remanded to the trial court to justify its deviation from the statutorily-mandated minimum sentence in this case.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Morgan · 709 So. 2d 672 - State v. Johnson