People v. Lopez’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The word ‘steal,’ as here used, has, as will be hereafter shown, a fixed, and well-defined meaning, and is perhaps, in its common every-day use and general acceptation, as well understood as any word in the English language. Webster defines it, ‘to take and carry away feloniously, as the personal goods of another,’ quoting Blackstone. The same definition is substantially given in all the standard law dictionaries, some of them giving ‘larceny’ as a synonym, and it is used with the same meaning in the following among other sections of the Penal Code: Section 492 (same as C. S., sec. 8434) relates to how the value of a thing stolen may be ascertained; section 496 (similar to C. S., see. 8438) to receiving stolen "property, knowing the same to be stolen; and section 497 (same as C. S., sec. 8439) provides that ‘every person who, in another state or county, steals the property of another, .... and brings the same into this state, may be convicted and punished in the same manner as if such larceny .... had been committed in this state. ’ To therefore contend that the defendant, who must be presumed to be a person of common understanding, did not know what was intended when he was charged by the information with stealing another man’s horse, is simply preposterous. Testing the sufficiency of this information by the application of the foregoing rules, we are forced to the conclusion that where the word ‘feloniously’ is omitted from, and the word ‘steal’ employed in, the charging pa”

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

2. ““The information upon which the defendant was tried and convicted of the larceny of a horse is claimed to be fatally defective, because it fails to charge that the offense was committed feloniously. “At common law, simple larceny, whether grand or petit, was a felony, and was defined to be the felonious taking and carrying away of the personal goods of another. The word ‘feloniously’ was therefore essential to the validity of an indictment for larceny, and it has been uniformly held that this word, when used in a statute or constitution without being defined, should be construed to have the meaning affixed to it by the common law. But our statute has modified the common-law system of pleading and the rule of procedure in many important respects, and prescribed certain simple rules by which alone the sufficiency of such pleading shall be determined. These rules, or such of them as have a direct bearing on the question under consideration, are contained in the following sections of the Penal Code: “Section 948 provides that ‘all the forms of pleading in criminal actions, and the rules by which the sufficiency of pleadings is to be determined, are those prescribed by this code.’ “Section 957 provides that ‘the words used in an indictment or information are construed in their usual acceptance in common language. ’ “Section 958 provides that the ‘words used in a statute to define a public offense need not be strictly pursued in the indictment or information, but other words convey”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. People v. Acevedo