Bales v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

15 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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The important question therefore is, whether these checks, kept and used for gambling contrary to the statute, can be the subject of larceny? That they could not have been recovered by action, is clear on the general principle that no court would lend its aid to the guilty keeper or owner to recover his illegal articles. And the case of Spaulding v. Preston, 21 Vt. 10 , is directly in point. But still, the question recurs, whether larceny can be committed of such prohibited things. And, to hold that it could not, would be to run the hazard of encouraging larceny by discouraging gaming. “The law punishes gaming and the keeping for gaming purposes articles of like character with those mentioned, and provides the mode of seizing and destroying them by the hand of an officer and the. order of the magistrate. And it is perhaps more politic that resort be had to the mode prescribed by law for that purpose, than to encourage a resort to theft for discouraging gambling. The cases cited from Massachusetts, where the subject was twice fully considered, take this view of it. Commonwealth v. Coffee, 9 Gray, 137; Com. v. Rourke, 10 Cush., 397; . . .””

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