United States v. Huffstatler’s Empirical Analysis
571 F.3d 620 · 2009
Citation profile
18 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions — most recently February 2020 · most notably United States v. Brooks (2011), United States v. Pape (2010)
18 federal appellate ·
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. § 2251 (Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996) · 18 U.S.C. § 3553
Relies on Kimbrough v. United States · United States v. Taylor · United States v. Roberson · Valentine v. City of Chicago · United States v. James
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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[.Kimbrough ] allows district courts to disagree on policy grounds with sentencing guidelines that exhibit methodological flaws; the same methodological flaws that characterize the crack guidelines— lack of empirical support — also undermine the child-pornography guidelines; therefore, district courts may sentence child-pornography offenders below the guidelines range based on disagreement with the policy embodied in the guidelines.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[The defendant’s] argument is based on analogy to the crack guidelines, yet those guidelines remain valid, even after Kimbrough. Judges are not required to disagree with them; a within-guidelines sentence for a crack offense may be reasonable. The child-exploitation guidelines are no different: while district courts perhaps have the freedom to sentence below the child-pornography guidelines based on disagreement with the guidelines, as with the crack guidelines, they are certainly not required to do so. Because the district court was not obligated to sentence [the defendant] below the range recommended by valid sentencing guidelines, [he] cannot establish error, let alone plain error.”
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.