United States v. Beasley’s Empirical Analysis
12 F.3d 280 · 1993
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 1 district ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions — most recently February 2019
19 federal appellate · 1 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
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 3553 · 18 U.S.C. § 924 · 21 U.S.C. § 841 (§ 401 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 952 · 28 U.S.C. § 991 · 28 U.S.C. § 994
Relies on Faretta v. California · Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corporation · Mistretta v. United States · Isaksen v. Vermont Castings, Inc. · United States v. Eichman
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We ... do not accept (the) argument for three basic reasons. First, although the language of Part (B), unlike Part (A), does refer to specific federal statutes, if one reads its words literally, it does not exclude, but rather includes, convictions under state law. Part (B) refers to “an offense described in ” the particular specified federal statutes. Those statues describe behavior commonly called “drug trafficking.” They refer to such activities as the making, importing, exporting, distributing, or dispensing, of drugs, and possessing drugs with an intent to engage in these activities. They do not refer to simple possession of drugs (except when entering or leaving the country). A literal reading of the statute would include a conviction under a state law that criminalizes some, or all, of these activities for such a state law would create “an offense, described in ” the federal statute. Second, examination of the purpose of the statutory provision supports the literal reading just described. Third, Beasley’s interpretation would create a significant anomaly in a guideline system, the primary objective of which is to create uniformity of sentencing treatment. See Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361 , 365-66, 109 S.Ct. 647 , 651-52, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989); 38 U.S.C. § 991 (b)(1)(B) (guidelines should “avoid[] unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar criminal conduct.”). In seeking uniformity, to distin”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Congress can embody a similar ... intent in different ways in different statutes.”
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.