United States v. Melvin’s Empirical Analysis
27 F.3d 710 · 1994
Citation profile
23 federal appellate · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 30 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2024 · most notably Castillo v. United States (2000), United States v. Branch (1996)
23 federal appellate · 1 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
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 924
Relies on Brown v. Ohio · United States v. Powell · United States v. Wilson · Jones v. Thomas · United States v. North
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 30 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“([T]he court's instruction explicitly permitted the jury . . . [to] suspend[] their deliberations on the use of firearms once they concluded that these experienced criminals must have carried at least a single gun . . . .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“exclude beyond a reasonable doubt the possibility that the jury rendered a guilty verdict ... based on a determination that the defendants possessed only a handgun.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the 30-year sentence could not be imposed because the jury had not been asked to decide whether those firearms were, in fact, automatic weapons.”
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.