State v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1981
Citation profile
9 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently October 2018
9 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 State v. Hudson · Lundy v. State
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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The conviction of the defendant under § 39-3703[, Tenn.Code Ann. (Cum. Supp.1978),] poses no problem with regard to the count charging the defendant with forcing the wife to perform fellatio upon himself. When the defendant forced the wife to perform fellatio upon her husband, however, the defendant was not the person who engaged in the direct sexual penetration of the victim. Nevertheless, we hold that the defendant is criminally liable as a principal for the offense with which he was charged. “At common law, the distinction between principals in the first and second degree had important procedural and substantive consequences. A principal in the first degree was one who actually committed the crime. A person who aided and abetted a crime and who was present at the scene of the crime was classified as a principal in the second degree. Although modern statutes have abolished some of the procedural consequences of the distinction ..., in some instances the distinction remains valid. Thus, the defendant here, as the only criminal actor, cannot be convicted as an aider or abettor T.C.A. §§ 39-109 and 110, because those statutes ‘presuppose that a principal exists’ who can be aided by the defendant. Lundy v. State, 521 S.W.2d 591, 596 (Tenn.Crim.App.1974). “The defendant is, however, criminally liable under the common law rule regarding the use of innocent agents as the instrumentality of a crime. “Tf a person causes a crime to be committed through the instrumentality of an inno”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“If a person causes a crime to be committed through the instrumentality of an innocent agent, he is the principal in the crime, and punishable accordingly .... As between him and the innocent agent, there is no such relation as principal in the first and second degree or principal and accessory; he alone is the guilty party.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Brown
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.