United States v. Grimm’s Empirical Analysis
50 F. 528 · 1892
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 2 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently January 1956
5 federal appellate · 2 district ·
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.
Relationships
Relies on People v. Noelke & Marks · Bates v. United States · United States v. Wight · Board of Commissioners of Excise v. Backus · United States v. Dorsey
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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The next inquiry is whether the act complained of — that is to say, the deposit of nonmailable letters in the mail — loses its criminal character because the letters were sent to a person in the service of the post office department in response to an inquiry made by that person under an assumed name, and for the purpose of detecting the defendant in the commission of a crime. This question must be decided in the light of authority, and without reference to the other question that has sometimes been discussed, whether a person is ever justified in resorting to artifice or deception for the purpose of discovering crime. In view of what seems to be the weight of authority at the present time, the court is compelled to decide the question last stated in the negative. If a letter gives information where obscene books or pictures can be obtained, it is an offense to. deposit such a letter in the mail with intent to give such information, and thereby to aid in the sale and distribution of such books and pictures, even though the party addressed happens to be an official in the service of the government. And, if such act is done voluntarily and intentionally — that is to say, if the nonmaildble letter is deposited in the mail by the accused without solicitation on the part of the officer that the mail be used to convey such intelligence — the weight of judicial opinion seems to be that the act does not lose its criminal character, though the offense may have been committed in respon”
1 later decision 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.