Pereira v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1954
Citation profile
3,702 federal appellate · 219 district · 199 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 5,009 later decisions (40 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Sedima Sprl v. Imrex Company Inc (1985), Whalen v. United States (1980)
3,702 federal appellate · 219 district · 199 state decisions — followed in 31 states
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedPereira v. United States (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Blockburger v. United States · Pinkerton v. United States · Nye & Nissen v. United States · Bollenbach v. United States
Cited together with Glasser v. United States · Kann v. United States · United States v. Maze · Parr v. United States · Pinkerton v. United States
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 5,009 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“incident to an essential part of the scheme.”
147 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Whoever knowingly deposits in any post office or authorized depository for mail matter, to be sent or delivered by the Post Office Department or knowingly causes to be delivered by the Post Office Department according to the direction thereon, any communication, with or without a name or designating mark subscribed thereto, addressed to any other person, and containing any demand or request for ransom or reward for the release of any kidnaped person, shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both. * * * * * “Whoever knowingly so deposits or causes to be delivered as aforesaid, any communication with or without a name or designating mark subscribed thereto, addressed to any other person and containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of the addressee or of another, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.””
38 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Aiding, abetting, and counseling are not terms which presuppose the existence of an agreement. Those terms have a broader application, making the defendant a principal when he consciously shares in a criminal act, regardless of the existence of a conspiracy.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.