State v. Bird’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently July 2008
1 federal appellate · 3 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 State v. St. Christopher
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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In recent years many courts, commentators, and the drafters of the Model Penal Code (see § 5.01) have either criticized or rejected the defense of legal impossibility, and thus it is not surprising that when the Minnesota Criminal Code was revised the drafters decided to eliminate the defense of legal impossibility (though not of inherent impossibility). The legislature did this by providing in subdivision 2 of the attempt statute [ Minn. Stat. § 609.17 (1978)] that an act may be an attempt ‘notwithstanding the circumstances under which it was performed or the means employed to commit the crime intended or the act itself were such that the commission of the crime was not possible, unless such impossibility would have been clearly evident to a person of normal understanding.’ ” 285 N.W.2d at 482 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““All courts are in agreement that so-called factual impossibility (in which an actor is unable to accomplish something because of facts unknown to him) is not a defense to a charge of attempt; on the other hand, courts traditionally have held that legal impossibility (in which even if the actor does everything he intended to do he yet will not have committed a crime) and inherent impossibility (in which an actor uses means which a reasonable person would view as completely inappropriate to the objectives sought) are defenses to a charge of attempt.” 285 N.W.2d at 482 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““[W]hether the defense of legal impossibility applies in these prosecutions in which, if the facts stated in the complaint are true, defendants paid money to a police informant in order to obtain property which in fact was not stolen but which was represented to them by the informant as being stolen.” 285 N.W.2d at 482 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.