People v. Staples’s Empirical Analysis
1970
Citation profile
27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 27 later decisions — most recently April 2016 · most notably 405 So. 2d 1080 - State v. Parish (1981), 36 Cal. App. 3d 452 - People v. Adami (1973)
27 state decisions
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. Buffum · People v. Gallardo · United States v. Coplon · 2 Cal. 2d 527 - People v. Miller · People v. Montgomery
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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]here are many decisions which hold that the accused has passed beyond “preparation,” although he has been interrupted before he has taken the last of his intended steps. Applying criminal culpability to acts directly moving toward commission of crime (but short of the last proximate act necessary to consummate the criminal design) ... is an obvious safeguard to society because it makes it unnecessary for police to wait before intervening until the actor has done the substantive evil sought to be prevented. It allows such criminal conduct to be stopped or intercepted when it becomes clear what the actor’s intention is and when the acts done show that the perpetrator is actually putting his plan into action. Discovering precisely what conduct falls within this latter category, however, often becomes a difficult problem. Because of the lack of specificity in [the attempt statutes], police, trial judges, jurors, and in the last analysis, appellate courts, face the dilemma of trying to identify that point beyond which conduct passes from innocent to criminal absent a specific event such as the commission of a prohibited substantive crime.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Lehnert“In the first category are those situations where the actor does all acts necessary (including the last proximate act) to commit the substantive crime, but nonetheless he somehow is unsuccessful. This lack of success is either a “failure” or a “prevention” brought about because of some extraneous circumstance, e.g., a malfunction of equipment, a miscalculation of operations by the actor or a situation wherein circumstances were at variance with what the actor believed them to be. Certain convictions for attempted murder illustrate the first category. Some turn on situations wherein the actor fires a weapon at a person but misses; takes aim at an intended victim and pulls the trigger, but the firing mechanism malfunctions; [or] plants on an aircraft a homemade bomb which sputters but does not explode.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Lehnert“the requisite overt act `need not be the last proximate or ultimate step towards commission of the substantive crime'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.