Shields v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1939
Citation profile
9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently June 2012
9 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 Spurr v. United States · Felton v. United States · Maben v. Rosser · Roby v. Newton · Williams v. People
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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“■“Every voluntary act of a human being is intentional; but, generally speaking, a voluntary act becomes willful in law only when it involves some degree of conscious wrong or evil purpose upon the part of the actor, or at least an inexcusable carelessness on his part, whether the act be right or wrong.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage““We do not agree with the trial judge that: ‘It is an irresistible conclusion that the fund was being used for the good will of the Police Commissioner himself. While the defendant may reasonably be suspected of not being averse to whatever political approval he may indirectly have received from the few trivial instances of ‘good will’ achieved outside of the police department, as described above, those instances after all create nothing but suspicion. Probably no public official ever resented good will resulting directly or indirectly from any of his acts, official or otherwise. So long as said acts do not amount to corruption, wilful maladministration in office or the like as properly defined by the law, mere suspicion as to his motive which is thereby created cannot outweigh the presumption of innocence. Removal from office must rest on a more solid foundation.” 8”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““We therefore say that the rule of measurement by which the guilt or innocence of the defendant must be determined requires that before defendant be legally pronounced guilty of wilful maladministration in office the acts relied upon to sustain that charge must have been committed with a bad or evil intent or for a bad or evil purpose; and that if said acts are merely thoughtless, or exhibit only an error of judgment, with no bad or evil purpose, they do not constitute wilful maladministration in office.” 7”
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.