Wideman v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The thing stolen may be described by the name by which it is usually known and designated. In this connection a general or class identity is sufficient and it is not necessary so to specify and describe the property as to identify it from other property of the same class. Raw materials, such as wood or ore, may be so described. Raw materials which have been refined, compounded, or prepared by artifice for further use in manufacturing may be described by the names which they respectively bear in their semi-manufactured state, as long as they remain in that state, as, for example, brass, lumber, saw logs, or textiles; but after any of these materials has been converted by process of manufacture into an article or commodity which has a distinctive name the thing thus created is capable of a more specific description and must be thereafter described by the name given to the finished product, as where cloth has been made into a garment or printed sheets into a book. A finished product of manufacture may be described by the name given it by the manufacturer or the name by which the thing is commonly designated by those who use it.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Ex parte Rumlin

2. “When the charge is made, therefore, that the defendant stole `sixty dollars' `in the United States currency', it means, by common understanding, that that amount of money in coin, bank notes, or notes issued by the government of United States, was stolen by him. Without more, however, as we have held, this would not be a sufficient description of the property stolen. If the number and denomination of the coins or bills stolen, or some of them, were known to the grand jury, the indictment should contain such description of them; or if unknown to them — if in fact they were unknown — the averment that the same were to the grand jury unknown, which averment would dispense with a necessity of a statement of their number and denomination.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 377 So. 2d 4 - Green v. State

3. ““The description, ‘one piece of steel cable,’ standing alone being insufficient, the averment that a better description was unknown was necessary to make the indictment sufficient, and proof that a better description was known to the grand jury presented a material variance between allegation and proof. The Court of Appeals so held, and that holding is affirmed.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Stinson v. State