Gross v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Appellant [Ralph Gross, Jr.], who lived in Broward County, had been friends with Christopher Forester since the early 1980's. In 1991 Forester was living in Ft. Pierce and became friends with his neighbor, John Brady, a police officer. By 1993 Forester and Brady developed a scheme to rob suspected drug dealers. The modus operandi called for them to go to the victim's home dressed and acting as police officers in order to gain entry. Brady enlisted his partner, Evans, and Forester recruited appellant, whose role was principally to select and identify Broward County victims and point out their homes. Because most of the victims were appellant's acquaintances, he did not go into the homes or directly participate in the robberies. His routine was to drive to the victim's home, give his accomplices a signal, and depart for the designated rendezvous to await his share of the loot. Over a period of approximately a year these four, together with several others who were brought in on certain of the crimes, committed a series of planned home invasion robberies. Relevant to the issues on this appeal are the incidents on the night of September 10, 1993. On that date, Forester, Brady, and Evans drove to Broward County and met with appellant. Several victims, including Mr. Mattos and Mr. Duffy, were identified, and the evening's frolic commenced. Appellant led the others to Mr. Duffy's home, then departed. Mr. Duffy was not home but Forester, Brady and Evans found an open sliding glass doo”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 765 So. 2d 39 - Gross v. State

2. “I would ask this on Count 1 that you read the definition of racketeering as I set fort [sic] in my Paragraph 1, I read that to you yesterday that in order for there to be racketeering, the State must prove the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt, and they say two but I ask that you add this, that the defendant was employed by, associated with an ongoing, structured, criminal enterprise. Such prove [sic] must show that the criminal enterprise had an identifiable decision making structure and a mechanism for controlling and directing the criminal enterprise on an ongoing rather than an ad hoc basis-and if you want to say for a special purpose that the jury knows what ad hoc means, I even looked it up-that the various employees or associates functioned as a continuous unit, and the criminal enterprise had an existence separate and apart from the pattern of racketeering activity in which the criminal enterprise engaged.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 765 So. 2d 39 - Gross v. State

3. “The enterprise is an entity, for present purposes a group of persons associated together for a common purpose of engaging in a course of conduct. [[Image here]] This Circuit has interpreted “enterprise” to include an informal criminal network engaged in racketeering activity, such as the association of Cagnina and his colleagues. In United States v. Elliott, 571 F.2d 880 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 953 , 99 S.Ct. 349 , 58 L.Ed.2d 344 (1978), the Court held that a group of persons who had committed a variety of unrelated offenses with no agreement as to any particular crime could be convicted of a RICO offense, because they were associated for the purpose of making money from repeated criminal activity. The Court stated that RICO reaches any group of individuals “whose association, however loose or informal, furnishes a vehicle for the commission of two or more predicate crimes.” (Emphasis added).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Helmadollar v. State