43 Md. App. 238 - Gray v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 2 district · 66 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 78 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"For inchoate, not fully-consummated crime, society has long had available in its arsenal both the statutory offense of 'assault with intent to .. .’ and the common law offense of criminal attempt. Although these two offenses have a significant overlap, they are nonetheless distinct and each addresses certain pockets of inchoate criminal activity not covered by the other.””

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Gomez · 53 Md. App. 171 - Walker v. State

2. “"The notion that an attempt to commit a crime — any crime, felony or misdemeanor, statutory or common law, preexisting or of later origin — is itself a crime came relatively late into Anglo-American jurisprudence. It had its origins in the Court of Star Chamber, during Tudor and early Stuart times. 1 Its crystallization into its present form, however, is generally traced to the case of Rex v. Scofield, Cald. 397, in 1784. 2 The court held in Rex v. Scofield, The intent may make an act, innocent in itself, criminal; nor is the completion of an act, criminal in itself, necessary to constitute criminality.’ The doctrine was locked into its modern mold by 1801 with the case of Rex v. Higgins, 2 East 5. Relying on Scofield, the court in Higgins confirmed a conviction, saying, 'All offenses of a public nature, that is, all such acts or attempts as tend to the prejudice of the community, are indictable.’ In the wake of Scofield and Higgins, it was clear that an attempt to commit any felony or misdemeanor, of common law origin or created by statute, was ■ itself a misdemeanor.””

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Cox v. State · 53 Md. App. 171 - Walker v. State

3. “to hold that a statute has abrogated common law rights existing at the time of its enactment, it must clearly appear that they are repugnant to the act, or the part thereof invoked, that their survival would in effect deprive it of its efficacy and render its provisions nugatory.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 53 Md. App. 313 - State v. Hardy · 61 Md. App. 436 - Anderson v. State