United States v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

26 federal appellate ·

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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The Subcommittee on Crime held a hearing ... to consider whether it should expand the predicate offenses (robbery and burglary) in existing law in order to add to its effectiveness. At this hearing a consensus developed in support of an expansion of the predicate offenses to include serious drug trafficking offenses ... and violent felonies, generally. This concept was encompassed in H.R. 4885 by deleting the specific predicate offenses for robbery and burglary and adding as predicate offenses State and Federal laws for which a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years or more is prescribed for manufacturing, distributing or possessing with intent to manufacture or distribute controlled substances and violent felonies under Federal or State law if the offense has an element the use, attempted use or threatened use of physical force against a person. This latter provision would include such felonies involving physical force against a person such as murder, rape, assault, robbery, etc. The other major question involved in these hearings was as to what violent felonies involving physical force against property should be included in the definition of “violent” felony. The Subcommittee agreed to add the crimes punishable for a term exceeding one year that involve conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to others. This will add State and Federal crimes against property such as burglary, arson, extortion, use of explosives and similar crimes as predicate off”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Walker

2. “It is true, as defendants contend, that a person can escape without force or serious risk of injury to anyone by simply walking away from an unguarded halfway house; he may also peacefully end his offense by waiting until the coast is clear and returning of his own volition. But the same is true of the individual who commits burglary of a dwelling: he can wait until the residents are on vacation and enter the house unarmed. The same is true of the arsonist, who, with care, can avoid serious risk of physical injury to another by limiting his fires to isolated, abandoned buildings .... And injury can likewise be avoided by the extortionist — who can commit his crime by threatening to damage only the reputation of his victim, and who can target only the meek and the weak.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Perez-Munoz v. Keisler

3. “The proper inquiry is whether the conduct encompassed by the elements of the offense, in the ordinary case, presents a serious potential risk of injury to another. One can always hypothesize unusual cases in which even a prototypi-cally violent crime might not present a genuine risk of injury — for example, an attempted murder where the gun, unbeknownst to the shooter, had no bullets ... or an extortion scheme where an anonymous blackmailer threatens to release embarrassing personal information about the victim unless he is mailed regular payments. In both cases, the risk of physical injury to another approaches zero. But that does not mean that the offenses ... are categorically nonviolent.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Perez-Munoz v. Keisler