People v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 2 district · 26 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 32 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It is also said that the parties to the conspiracy are improperly described in the indictment; it being urged that Robert H. Howe was in the conspiracy, and that, ás that fact was known to the grand jury, he should have been specifically named in the indictment and not been referred to under the general description that he was unknown to the grand jury. This phase of the argument proceeds upon the hypothesis that the persons who enter into a conspiracy so form a part of the offense as to be descriptive of the offense, and that a misdescription of the parties who are engaged in a conspiracy is fatal. The logic of this position is, if too many or too few are named in the indictment, there must be an acquittal of all. This cannot be the law. Clearly, if three persons are named in an indictment as conspirators, two may be convicted and one acquitted, and, if two or more are named in the indictment, it would be nó defense to prove that some one not named in the indictment was a party to the conspiracy. "We are satisfied the great weight of authority is to the effect that the persons engaged in a conspiracy are not so far a part of the offense as to be said to be descriptive of the offense, and the fact that a conspirator is designated in the indictment as unknown, when he is known, to the grand jury, is not fatal to a conviction.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Jones v. United States