United States v. Watson’s Empirical Analysis
599 F.2d 1149 · 1979
Citation profile
34 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 64 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably Doggett v. United States (1992), United States v. Thomas (1985)
34 federal appellate · 8 district · 6 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. § 3282
Relies on Barker v. Wingo · United States v. Marion · United States v. Lovasco · United States v. Ewell · Toussie 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 64 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[e]ven if we make the charitable assumption that Muse in fact suffered a memory lapse on these items, there is nothing to show it had not occurred before June 1, 1976, when the indictment, conceded by the majority to have been timely, was returned, or November, 1976, when the statute of limitations ran. The notion that Muse’s lapse of memory about where he lived between 1969 and 1970 occurred in the interval between June, 1976 or November, 1976 and September, 1977 defies the teachings of psychology,1 as well as common sense.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[e]xcept as otherwise expressly provided by law, no person shall be prosecuted, tried, or punished for any offense ... unless the indictment is found or the information is instituted within five years ... after such offense shall have been committed.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“But when the defendant can show substantial actual prejudice, the indictment must be dismissed, for even a legitimate prosecutorial interest is then insufficient to effectuate statute of limitations policies.”
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.