Ferraro v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
33 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently May 2016 · most notably 3 Md. App. 11 - Boone v. State (1968), Wright v. State (1959)
33 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 Sorrells v. United States · Fairmount Glass Works v. Cub Fork Coal Co. · Grimm v. United States · Callahan v. State · Swann 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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘It is not objectionable for an officer of the law to lay a trap or unite with others to detect an offender. The only effect would be to justify a more careful scrutiny of the evidence. Where the crime is not against the person nor the property of the instigator, it is not clear how, in the absence of special circumstances, the commission of crime at the solicitation or procurement of another, although an officer of the law, makes the culprit any less guilty than if the criminal design had originated with the wrongdoer himself.’ ””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Baxter v. State · Grohman v. State““We do not find it necessary to decide which, if any, of the divergent views 1 of the defense of en trapment is law in Maryland. We think there is no evidence legally sufficient to support the defense of entrapment—on any accepted theory—certainly not to support a peremptory verdict of acquittal. If appellants’ testimony were believed, there would be no guilt on their part and no entrapment. If their testimony is not believed, the activity of the police and their tool Heineman was ‘permitted activity, frequently essential to the enforcement of the law’ and had ‘the appropriate object’ of ‘revealing the criminal design.’ 2 This activity was no more unlawful or improper than the use of decoy letters to trap mail thieves or users of the mail for obscene matter. In the two expeditions * * * [in question] there was no pressure or inducement to lure an innocent man into crime, but only a shrewd and proper test to determine whether Heineman’s information was true or * * * [Ferraro and Patti] were innocent.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Baxter v. State
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.