People v. Howard’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 28 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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It remains to be determined whether the fact that the complaint upon which a defendant is arrested and committed states no offense against him is so fatal to the regularity of the proceeding as to require the information based thereon, itself sufficient in form, to be set aside, upon the ground that he has never been legally held to answer. Some of the earlier cases, arising under the provision of our present constitution providing for prosecutions by information, seem to treat the character or sufficiency of the complaint before the magistrate as largely an immaterial or nonessential factor in determining the regularity of the proceeding-for a commitment (see People v. Velarde, 59 Cal. 457 ; People v. Wheeler, 65 Cal. 77 , 2 Pac. 892 ; People v. Staples, 91 Cal. 23 , 27 Pac. 523 ); although none of those cases, we think, go to the extent of holding that the complaint need not state an offense. But in the recent case of People v. Christian, 101 Cal. 471 , 35 Pac. 1043 , where the latest expression of the court upon the subject is to be found, all the earlier c'ases are fully reviewed, and the reasoning and conclusion in that case would seem to impart more dignity and importance to the office of that pleading in criminal prosecutions than theretofore; accorded it. In that case the' defendant was charged with an assault, with a deadly weapon upon one George Magin, and was held to answer therefor. The district attorney filed an information charging him with such an assault upon”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. United States v. Collins