United States v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

19 federal appellate · 3 district ·

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 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “little hesitation in concluding that the plea agreement in this case is ‘based on’ the Sentencing Guidelines. ... It is doubtful that the parties selected 180 months based on some intuitive sense that this term of imprisonment would be an appropriate disposition of the case. Rather, a more reasonable assessment is that this sentence, which is slightly above the bottom of the range, represented] a trade-off between Smith’s minor criminal history and the seriousness of the drug trafficking conspiracy, with the nature of the offense receiving more weight in the parties’ agreement.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. United States v. Roland Anderson

2. “a defendant who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission ..., upon motion of the defendant or the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, or on its own motion, the court may reduce the term of imprisonment, after considering the factors set forth in section 3553(a) to the extent that they are applicable, if such a reduction is consistent with applicable policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 859 F. Supp. 2d 97 - United States v. Heard