Dunbar v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
156 U.S. 185 · 1895
Citation profile
359 federal appellate · 43 district · 54 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 530 later decisions (36 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2022 · most notably Hagner v. United States (1932), Victor v. Nebraska (1994)
359 federal appellate · 43 district · 54 state decisions — followed in 21 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. Carll · Hopt v. People · Miles v. United States · Commonwealth v. Costley
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 530 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““No indictment found and presented by a grand jury in any district * * * court of the United States shall be deemed insufficient, nor shall the trial, judgment, or other proceeding thereon be affected by reason of any defect or imperfection in matter of form only, which shall not tend to the prejudice of the defendant.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is true some parol testimony might be required to show the absolute identity of the smuggled goods, but such proof is often requisite to sustain a plea of once in jeopardy. It is no valid objection to an indictment that the description of the property in respect to which the offense is charged to have been committed is broad enough to include more than one specific article. * * * No objection was made to the sufficiency of the indictments by demurrer, motion to quash, or in any other manner until after the verdict. While it may be true that a defendant by waiting until that time does not waive the objection that some substantial element of the crime is omitted, yet he does waive all objections which run to the mere form in which the various elements of the crime are stated, or to the fact that the indictment is inartificially drawn. If, for instance, the description of the property does not so clearly identify it as to enable him to prepare his defense, he should raise the question by some preliminary motion or perhaps by a demand for a bill of particulars; otherwise it may properly be assumed as against him that he is fully informed of the precise property in respect to which he is charged to have violated the law.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““You are required in a criminal case, such as this, to decide (he questions submitted to you upon the strong probabilities of the case; but these probabilities must be so strong as not to exclude all doubts or all possibility of error, but to exclude all reasonable doubts, and when you have attained that degree of conviction, upon which you as prudent men would unhesitatingly act in the most important affairs of life, you can be sure that you have reached that state of conviction that excludes all reasonable doubt.””
2 later decisions 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.