United States v. Razzaia’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “If it were a crime to carry a notebook, then, on proper evidence, a jury verdict could stand despite a defendant’s assertion that what he actually carried was a similar but slightly different item. In a prosecution for such a possessory offense the evidence would be expected to be less equivocal than the agent’s testimony here. For instance, the agent acknowledged that the object the defendant was carrying could have been a clipboard, as defendant claimed. But this is a prosecution for false swearing, and in such a prosecution the careful use of words becomes important. If a more extensive basis had been laid for these questions, a perjury conviction might have been upheld despite the elusive distinctions between a notebook and a clipboard, or between large and small envelopes. Under the circumstances here, however, these distinctions are not the stuff of which perjury convictions can be made.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 426 F. Supp. 696 - United States v. Clifford