State v. Greenlaw’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

29 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 29 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Whoever, by force and violence or by putting in fear, feloniously steals and takes from the person of another property that is the subject of larceny is guilty of robbery * *”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Levesque · State v. McKeough

2. ““The jurors aforesaid, on their oath aforesaid, do further present that Gerard C. Castonguay, of Livermore Falls, in the County of Androscoggin and State of Maine, on the fifteenth day of April in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five, at Wilton in said County of Franklin, being then and there armed with a dangerous weapon, to wit, a revolver then and there loaded with powder and leaden bullets, on one Brent E. McDonald feloniously did make an assault, and by force and violence, money, to wit, sundry national bank bills, United States treasury notes and certificates, and Federal Reserve bank bills, all current as money in the United States of America, of the property of Depositors Trust Company, a corporation duly organized and existing by law and having its principal place of business at Augusta in the County of Kennebec and State of Maine, from the person of the said Brent E. McDonald, who was then and there an employee of said Depositors Trust Company, feloniously did steal, take and carry away.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Castonguay

3. ““While in technical and juristic terms the Justice presiding academically and formally told of felonious stealing and larceny, as such, we are constrained to conclude that the instructions in their totality generate an irresoluble doubt as to the adequacy of the jury understanding of the law applicable to the fact of taking, here. The instruction requested by the respondents would have afforded an elucidation which under the circumstances must be deemed to have been necessitous and probably would have supplied definitive enlightenment unpos-sessed by the jury. There was prejudicial error and the exception must be sus tained.” (Emphasis added.) State v. Greenlaw, supra, 159 Me. at 149 , 189 A.2d at 374 .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. McKeough