United States v. Wood’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

136 federal appellate · 2 district · 42 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 209 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““■* * * that circumstances, without any witness, when they exist in documentary or written testimony, may combine to establish the charge of perjury; as they may combine, altogether unaided by oral proof, except the proof of their authenticity, to prove any other fact connected with the declarations of persons, or business of human life. That principle is, that circumstances necessarily make up a part of the proofs of human transactions; that such as have been reduced to writing in unequivocal terms, when the writing has been proved to be authentic, cannot be made more certain by evidence aliunde; * * ””

   6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Arena v. United States · United States v. Collins

2. “[I]n what cases may a living witness to the corpus delicti of a defendant, be dispensed with, and documentary or written testimony be relied upon to convict? We answer, to all such where a person is charged with a perjury, directly disproved by documentary or written testimony springing from himself, with circumstances showing the corrupt intent. In cases where the perjury charge is contradicted by a public record, proved to have been well known to the defendant when he took the oath; the oath only being proved to have been taken. In cases where a party is charged with taking an oath, contrary to what he must necessarily have known to be the truth, and the false swearing can be proved by his own letters, relating to the fact sworn to; or by other written testimony, existing and being found in the possession of a defendant, and which has been treated by him as containing the evidence of the fact recited in it. Let us suppose a case or two, in illustration of the positions just laid down. A defendant, in two answers to a bill in equity, swears unequivocally to a fact, and as positively against it. A document is produced, executed by himself, decisive of the truth of the fact. In such a case, can a living witness be wanted; or could any number of living witnesses prove, more certainly, the false swearing, than it would be proved by the document and the defendant’s contradictory oaths? Or, take the case of defendant being sued in equity, to recover from him the contents of a lost”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. People v. Fueston

3. ““The defendant was indicted for perjury in falsely taking and swearing '‘the owners’ oath in eases where goods have been actually purchased,’ as prescribed by the fourth section of the supplementary collection law of the 1st of March, 1823. The perjury was charged to have been committed in April, 1837, at the custom house in New York, on the importation of certain woolen goods in the ship Sheridan. The indictment charged the defendant with having intentionally suppressed the true cost of the goods, with intent to defraud the United States. (2) Charging the perjury in swearing to the truth of the invoice produced by him at the time of entry of the goods; the invoice being false, etc. It appeared by the evidence that the goods mentioned in the entry had been bought by the defendant from John Wood, his father, of Saddleworth, England. No witness was produced by the United-States to prove that the value or cost of the goods was greater than that for which they were entered at the custom house in New York. The evidence of this offered by the prosecution was the invoice book of John Wood, and thirty-five original letters from the defendant to John Wood, between 1834 and 1837, showing a combination between John Wood and the defendant to defraud the United States by invoicing and entering goods at less than their actual cost; that this combination comprehended the goods imported in the Sheridan; and that the goods received by that ship had been entered by the defendant, he knowing th”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. People v. Doody