Kaplan v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

44 federal appellate · 2 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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Karn v. United States, 9 Cir. 1946, 158 F.2d 568 , a charge of larceny, where under Alaskan statutes this court found no ‘competent and substantial’ evidence to convict, and so reversed. In doing so, it followed the old rule that in order to convict, inferences that may be drawn from circumstantial evidence ‘ * * * must not only be consistent with a defendant’s guilt, but inconsistent with every reasonable hypothesis of innocence. The evidence should be required to point so surely and unerringly to the guilt of the accused as to exclude every reasonable hypothesis but that of guilt.’ “These are brave words, but do not represent the present law. As we have frequently and recently pointed out in Byrnes v. United States, 9 Cir., 327 F.2d 825 , note 5a, and Woxberg v. United States, 9 Cir., 329 F.2d 284 (No. 18805, decided Mar. 12, 1964), this rule was disapproved by the United States Supreme Court in Holland v. United States, supra, 348 U.S. [121] pp. 139-140, 75 S.Ct. [127] p. 137, 99 L.Ed. 150 . Cf. also Remmer v. United States, 9 Cir. 1953, 205 F.2d 277 , 278, reversed on other grounds, 347 U.S. 227 , 74 S.Ct. 450 , 98 L.Ed. 654 and many other recent cases from this Circuit. The view urged upon us is not the law. The current correct test is whether ‘reasonable minds could find that the evidence excludes every hypothesis but that of guilt/ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Conaway v. United States