People v. Fields’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 30 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently June 2018 · most notably People v. Babcock (2003), Elia v. Gonzales (2005)
8 federal appellate · 30 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. § 3553
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he court may depart from the minimum term of imprisonment ... if the court finds on the record that there are substantial and compelling reasons to do so.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“"the existence or nonexistence of a particular factor is a factual determination for the sentencing court to determine, and should therefore be reviewed by an appellate court for clear error. The determination that a particular factor is objective and verifiable should be reviewed by the appellate court as a matter of law. A trial court's determination that the objective and verifiable factors present in a particular case constitute substantial and compelling reasons to depart from the statutory minimum sentence shall be reviewed for abuse of discretion."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passagee.g. People v. Babcock · People v. Geno“The statute requires a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years ... unless there are substantial and compelling reasons to depart.... In order for there to be a departure from the mandatory minimum it's incumbent upon the defendant to make a showing of those substantial and compelling reasons. Historically those reasons having [sic] included cooperation with law enforcement in order to reduce the criminal cartel in the delivery of narcotics. And historically from other similarly situated cases the only substantial and compelling reason that has been accepted has been the objective providing of assistance to law enforcement such that the criminal enterprise is diminished. That showing has not been made here. While I'm sure that [defendant] in his heart would have liked to have cooperated, or rendered other assistance, so as to be able to make a showing of substantial and compelling reasons for departure, he found that he was not capable of doing that.... The legislature has effectuated such a severe penalty because of the poison that drugs does [sic] to the community....”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.