176 Ga. App. 364 - Whitley v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
4 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently June 2005
4 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 Reynolds v. States · Blalock v. Blalock · Spurlin v. State · 159 Ga. App. 185 - Slack v. State · 132 Ga. App. 612 - Hall v. State
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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“`Every person concerned in the commission of a crime is a party thereto and may be charged with and convicted of commission of the crime. . . . A person is concerned in the commission of a crime . . . if he . . . (i)ntentionally aids or abets in the commission of the crime. . . .' OCGA § 16-2-20. Presence at the scene is not sufficient. [Cit.] `Even approval of the act, not amounting to encouragement, will not suffice.' [Cit.] And mere knowledge, by a private citizen, that a crime is going to be committed, in the absence of the duty to prevent it, does not make the citizen guilty of participating in the crime. [Cits.] Our sister states and federal courts have generally held that aiding and abetting the commission of crime requires affirmative action, and an individual's mere knowledge that a crime will be committed, and failure to take steps to prevent that crime, do not amount to aiding and abetting. [Cit.] However, if the person had knowledge of the intended crime and shared in the criminal intent of the principal actor, he is an aider and abettor. [Cits.] Hence, if the defendant was at the scene and did not disapprove or oppose the commission of the offense, a trier of fact may consider such conduct in connection with prior knowledge and would be authorized to conclude the defendant assented to the commission of the offense, that he lent his approval to it, thereby aiding and abetting commission of the crime. [Cit.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“`[e]ven approval of the act, not amounting to encouragement, will not suffice'”
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.