State v. Ebbeler’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Plainly such tests as these of guilty knowledge on the part of the accused subjected him to a standard of conduct and of capacity to detect crime, which the jury might conclude to be the standard of reasonable and honest men of average intelligence, when acting under circumstances like those which might be found to have existed here. The effect of such tests was to charge the accused with guilty knowledge or not upon what the jury might find would have induced belief in the mind of a man such as they were told to consider, rather than the belief that was actually created in the mind of the accused; or, at last, the ‘ accused might be condemned even if his only fault consisted in being less cautious or suspicious than honest men of average intelligence are of the acts of others. The result of the rule of the charge would be to convict a man, not because guilty, but because stupid. The issue was whether the accused had knowledge, not whether some other person would have obtained knowledge, that the goods had been stolen. The circumstances must have had that effect upon the mind of the accused, to constitute knowledge in him. The issue must be determined upon the individual test of the accused. It may well be that the tests stated in the charge are proper enough to fix civil liability for the acts or omissions of a defendant, but hardly to fasten upon him an intent to commit a felony. There is some conflict in the decisions upon this sub ject, but we think the tests of the char”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Reser v. State