United States v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 2 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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Historically, forfeiture proceeded from the legal fiction that property used in the commission of a crime itself offends the law. See, e.g., The Palmyra, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 1, 14 , 6 L.Ed. 531 (1827). The forfeited res, as a legal entity, is identical with the physical article when the property is, for example, a sea vessel, an automobile, or a firearm. Currency, however, differs substantially from such objects. Paper currency, in the form of the Federal Reserve Note, is defined as an ‘obligation[ ] of the United States’ that may be ‘redeemed in lawful money on demand.’ 12 U.S.C. § 411 (2002). These bills are not ‘money per se but promissory notes supported by the monetary reserves of the United States. When an individual engages in a criminal transaction with paper currency, although the individual certainly uses the notes to accomplish the criminal end, the currency’s monetary value funds the transaction and is also an appropriate target of forfeiture. This result also follows from the fact that an individual who uses legal documents representing ownership of land to raise funds for a criminal purpose renders the land itself subject to forfeiture. See United States v. RD 1, Box 1, Thompsontown, 952 F.2d 53 (3d Cir.1991). It would be absurd, in that case, to suppose that forfeiture could attach only to the document and not to the legal interests represented by that document. We therefore hold that the DEA did not abandon the res when it converted the currency to a cashier’”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Savely v. Utah Highway Patrol · 216 So. 3d 431 - Gray v. City of Opelika

2. “the cashier's check was an appropriate, fungible surrogate for the seized currency”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Savely v. Utah Highway Patrol