Johnson v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Since each act is required to be willful I ... advise you that the defendant’s conduct is not willful if he acted through negligence, inadvertence or mistake, or due to his good faith, or misunderstanding of the requirements of the law. It should be pointed out, however, that a defendant’s disagreement with the law, no matter how earnestly held, does not constitute a defense of good faith, misunderstanding, or mistake. It is the duty of all citizens to obey the law, whether they agree with it or not. One of the elements of the crimes charged ... is willful failure to file a return or pay a tax. Willfulness may be established through proof that Mr. Allnutt’s failure ... constituted a voluntary intentional violation of a known legal duty. In other words, the State must prove that Mr. Allnutt must have known clearly and without a doubt, that he had a legal duty which was clearly stated to him, to file the return demanded by the State or pay the tax in order for the element of willfulness to be proven by the State. Before willfulness can be found, a clear legal duty must first be found.” (Emphasis supplied.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 59 Md. App. 694 - Allnutt v. State