United States v. Forest’s Empirical Analysis
355 F.3d 942 · 2004
Citation profile
13 federal appellate · 6 district · 13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 53 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2022 · most notably American Civil Liberties Union v. United States Department of Justice (2011), State v. Earls (2013)
13 federal appellate · 6 district · 13 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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Relies on Taylor v. Louisiana · United States v. Watson · Duren v. Missouri · Smith v. Maryland · Lockhart v. McCree
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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In order to reestablish visual contact, a DEA agent dialed Garner’s cellular phone (without allowing it to ring) several times that day and used Sprint’s computer data to determine which transmission towers were being “hit” by Garner’s phone. This “cell-site data” revealed the general location of Garner. From this data, DEA agents determined that Garner had traveled to the Cleveland area and then returned to the area of Y oungstown/W arren.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photoelectronic or photooptical system that affects interstate or foreign commerce, but does not include . . . any communication from a tracking device (as defined in section 3117 of this title).”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“is broad, however, and contains no articulation of how precise a device must be. Moreover, cell-site data unquestionably permits the tracking of the movement of a cell phone when two-thirds of users can be pinpointed within 100 meters and 95 percent within 300 meters. One example of the technique is described in the opinion deciding Forest: In order to reestablish visual contact, a DEA agent dialed Garner's cellular phone (without allowing it to ring) several times that day and used Sprint's computer data to determine which transmission towers were being”
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.