United States v. Lachowski’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Usually, for an error to be plain, it must be in contravention of either Supreme Court or controlling circuit precedent. The lack of such precedent, however, does not prevent a finding of plain error if the error was, in fact, clear or obvious based on the materials available to the [trial] court. In the absence of controlling precedent of either this court or the Supreme Court, the [trial] court is granted more discretion under the plain error standard simply because the less guidance there is, the smaller the realm of decisions that would be clearly or obviously wrong under current law. There is ultimately, however, a limit to what the [trial] court can do, even under plain error review, and, for example, in the statutory construction context, it is possible that the construction of the statute proffered by the [trial] court departs so far from the text that it is clearly incorrect as a matter of law.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Henderson

2. “In the absence of controlling precedent of either this court or the Supreme -Court, the district court is granted more discretion under the plain error standard simply because the less guidance there is, the smaller the realm of decisions that would be clearly or obviously wrong under current law.”

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