People v. McElroy’s Empirical Analysis
1897
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 58 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 69 later decisions — most recently September 2018 · most notably 19 Cal. 4th 686 - People v. Ortega (1998), United States v. Wofford (1997)
11 federal appellate · 58 state decisions — followed in 13 states
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 Simmons v. State · Commonwealth v. Smith
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 69 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“stealing ... property from the person has been from an early period, under the English statutes, treated as a much graver and more heinous offense than ordinary or common theft, — partly by reason of the ease with which it could be perpetrated, and the difficulty of guarding against it, and ‘partly because of the greater liability of endangering the person or life of the victim.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“obvious purpose was to protect persons and property against the approach of the pickpocket, the purse-snatcher, the jewel abstracter, and other thieves of like character who obtain property by similar means of stealth or fraud, and that it was in contemplation that the property shall at the time be in some way actually upon or attached to the person, or carried or held in actual physical possession such as clothing, apparel, or ornaments, or things contained therein, or attached thereto, or property held or carried in the hands, or by other means upon the person; that it was not intended to include property removed from the person and laid aside, however immediately it may be retained in the presence or constructive control or possession of the owner while so laid away from his person and out of his hands. . . . Had the legislature intended that the offense should include instances of property merely in the immediate presence, but not in the manual possession about the person, it would doubtless have so provided, as it has in defining robbery. Robbery is defined as the felonious taking of personal property in the possession of another from his person or immediate presence,' etc. (Pen.Code, [§ ] 211), while the requirement of this offense is that it shall be `taken from the person.'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“whether the property must be actually on, or attached to, the person, or merely under the eye, or within the immediate reach, and so constructively within the control, of the owner.”
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.