United States v. Colbert’s Empirical Analysis
474 F.2d 174 · 1973
Citation profile
127 federal appellate · 7 district · 119 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 290 later decisions — most recently February 2026 · most notably McDuff v. State (1997), United States v. Miller (1978)
127 federal appellate · 7 district · 119 state decisions — followed in 29 states
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 26 U.S.C. § 5861 (§ 201 of the Gun Control Act of 1968) · 50 U.S.C. § 3811
Relies on Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Terry v. Ohio · Katz v. United States · Johnson v. Zerbst · Carroll v. United States
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 290 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The issue is not abandonment in the strict property-right sense, but whether the person prejudiced by the search had voluntarily discarded, left behind, or otherwise relinquished his interest in the property in question so that he could no longer retain a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to it at the time of the search.”
50 later decisions quote this exact passage““* * * [I]t is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule. * * * There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee’s person and the area ‘within his immediate control’— construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.””
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Smith“exception, see, e.g., Terry v. Ohio, 1968, 392 U.S. 1 , 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889; others, the”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Carlton v. Estelle
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.