18 U.S.C. § 2317
Section 2317 · Sale or receipt of livestock
Amended 3 times on record
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case United States v. Wetzel (1975)
Most recently applied in BAHTA (July 2000)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Whoever receives, conceals, stores, barters, buys, sells, or disposes of any livestock, moving in or constituting a part of interstate or foreign commerce, knowing the same to have been stolen, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Historical and Revision Notes
Based on title 18, U.S.C., 1940 ed., §§419c, 419d (Aug. 18, 1941, ch. 366, §§4, 5, 55 Stat. 632).
Definitions of “cattle” and “interstate or foreign commerce”, contained in section 419a of title 18, U.S.C., 1940 ed., are incorporated in sections 10 and 2311 of this title.
Venue provision of said section 419d of title 18, U.S.C., 1940 ed., was omitted as completely covered by section 3237 of this title.
Minor changes were made in phraseology.
Amendments
1994—Pub. L. 103–322 substituted “fined under this title” for “fined not more than $5,000”.
1984—Pub. L. 98–473 substituted “livestock” for “cattle” in section catchline and text.