Pettibone v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
148 U.S. 197 · 1893
Citation profile
576 federal appellate · 93 district · 85 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 950 later decisions (43 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2023 · most notably Russell v. United States (1962), Bartkus v. People of State of Illinois (1959)
576 federal appellate · 93 district · 85 state decisions — followed in 32 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 United States v. Hess · United States v. Carll · Savin · Coy
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 950 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A conspiracy is sufficiently described as a combination of two or more persons, by concerted action, to accomplish a criminal or unlawful purpose, or some purpose not in itself criminal or unlawful, by criminal or unlawful means.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage““This indictment does not, in terms, aver that it was the purpose of the conspiracy to violate the injunction referred tti, or to impede or obstruct the due administration of justice in the circuit court; but it states, as a legal conclusion from the previous allegations, that the defendants conspired so to obstruct and impede. * * * “Undoubtedly it is a condition of penal laws that ignorance of them constitutes no defense to an indictment for their violation, but that rule has no application here. The obstruction of the due administration of justice in any court of the United States, corruptly or by threats or force, is indeed made criminal, but such obstruction can only arise when justice is being administered. Unless that fact exists the statutory offense cannot be committed, and while, with knowledge or notice of that fact, the intent to offend accompanies obstructive action, without such knowledge or notice the evil intent is lacking. It is enough if the thing is done which the statute forbids, provided the situation invokes the protection of the law, and the accused is chargeable with knowledge or notice of the situation; but not otherwise. “It is insisted however, that the evil intent is to be found, not in the intent to violate the United States statute, but in the intent to commit an unlawful act, in the doing of which justice was in fact obstructed, and that, therefore, the intent to proceed in the obstruction of justice must be supplied by a fiction of law. But the”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““A conspiracy is sufficiently described as a combination of two or more persons, by concerted action, to accomplish a criminal or unlawful purpose, or some purpose not in itself criminal or unlawful, by criminal or unlawful means, and the rule is accepted, as laid down by Chief Justice Shaw in Commonwealth v. Hunt, 4 Metc. (Mass.) 111, [ 38 Am.Dec. 346 ], that, when the criminality of a conspiracy consists in an unlawful agreement of two or more persons to compass or promote some criminal or illegal purpose, that purpose must be fully and clearly stated in the indictment; while if the criminality of the offence consists in the agreement to accomplish a purpose, not in itself criminal or unlawful, by criminal or unlawful means, the means must be set out.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.