United States v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
396 F.2d 310 · 1968
Citation profile
37 federal appellate · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 51 later decisions — most recently May 1988 · most notably Lowe v. United States (1969), United States v. Quinn (1987)
37 federal appellate · 7 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. § 659
Relies on Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Wong Sun v. United States · Ker v. State of California · Henry v. United States · United States v. Di Re
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 51 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Not only were appellants not in custody, but there were few restraints of any kind on them at that time (when they were questioned as to the origin of the packages). * * * Appellants were approached on a public street, not questioned in the station house * * *, and they never suggested that they wanted to leave. * * * Under these circumstances, the few questions asked appellants on the street to determine whether any crime had been committed were more in the nature of ‘on the scene’ questioning as part of the fact-finding process than custodial interrogation.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Congress has [in section 659] undertaken to protect and promote the flow of goods in interstate commerce, and that this undertaking is not to be hampered by technical legal conceptions.””
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.