Smith v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 13 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 20 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “To warrant an instruction it is not sufficient that an accused merely claim a belief of a right to enter. A bona fide belief must have some justification— some reasonable basis. Such was not present here. Appellant’s transgression of the lot in the daytime when construction activity was in progress and workers present hardly created a right, or reasonable belief in such, to trespass on the locked unguarded site at night. Moreover, appellant himself acknowledged that he knew his intrusion was unwarranted when, upon questioning by the prosecutor, he testified that the gate was locked “[t]o keep people from going through there.” It is irrelevant that the stated purpose for the unlawful entry (assuming appellant’s version to be true), i. e., to take a shortcut from the adjacent basketball court, may have been intrinsically harmless; the crime was committed when he intentionally trespassed on the property against the will of the party in control without a justifiable reason. [Id. at 439-40; footnote omitted; emphasis in original.]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Gaetano v. United States