State v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1891
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 1973
15 state decisions
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 Commonwealth v. Holmes · State v. Doyle · People v. Girardin · State v. Murphy · State v. Russell
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In the present indictment, the defendant had information given to him as to the offence charged, by the date of the mailing, by the title hi' the book, and by the address on the wrapper. The indictment states, the reason for not setting forth the book to be. that it is too obscene and indecent to be set forth. A copy of the book, with a designation of the obscene passages relied on, oonld have been obtained before the trial, by asking for a'bill of particulars. The defendant was not deprived of the right ‘to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.’ The weight of authority,- as well as of reasoning, is in favor of the sufficiency of the present indictment.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“did unlawfully and knowingly deposit, and cause to be deposited, in the mail of the United. States, then and there, for mailing and delivery, a certain obscene, lewd, and lascivious book, called ‘Cupid’s Yokes, or The Binding Forces of Conjugal Life,’ which said book is so lewd, obscene, and lascivious, that the same would be offensive to the court here, and improper to be placed upon the records thereof; wherefore, the jurors aforesaid do not set forth the samé in this indictment.”
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.