United States Peeples v. Greer’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 4 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The appellant herein argues before us that the decision in [Solem v. Helm (1983), 463 U.S. 277 , 77 L. Ed. 2d 637 , 103 S. Ct. 3001 , which was decided after the district court’s opinion] now makes Judge Baker’s refusal to apply to the facts of this case the Eighth Amendment analysis of Godfrey v. Georgia, supra, improper. But we find that Solem does not serve to change Judge Baker’s decision. Put succinctly, Godfrey, Gregg and Proffitt still stand for the proposition that in a death penalty case there can be cruel and unusual punishment whenever there is a substantial risk that due to the language of the state statute the death penalty can be imposed in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Solem addresses an inherently different consideration-one which serves to permit limited federal court surveillance of state court term sentences. It is that imprisonment for a term of years can be found invalid under the Eighth Amendment, when the term of years is significantly disproportionate to the offense. Both Solem and the Godfrey line of cases fall trader the scrutiny of the Eighth Amendment, but they do not combine here to condemn Peeples’ sentence. The petitioner here has not claimed that his term of years is disproportionate to his offense. In fact, any such claim would be futile. It is true that Peeples was sentenced to 80 years, but he received it as punishment for a brutal and violent murder. This is a far cry from the defendant in Solem who as punishment for relatively minor”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 184 Ill. App. 3d 206 - People v. Peeples

2. “was outrageously wanton or vile, horrible or inhuman, in that it involved torture, depravity of mind, or an aggravated battery to the victim.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Gerald Cochran v. Jack R. Duckworth

3. “exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Nobles v. Welborn