United States v. McDowell’s Empirical Analysis
705 F.2d 426 · 1983
Citation profile
42 federal appellate · 1 district · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 55 later decisions — most recently December 2024 · most notably United States v. Pennell (1984), United States v. Dworken (1988)
42 federal appellate · 1 district · 2 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 21 U.S.C. § 846 (§ 406 of the Controlled Substances Act)
Relies on Santoni v. United States · United States v. Beechum · Infelice v. United States · In re Disbarment of Kleindienst · Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc.
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 55 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“First, the defendant must have been acting with the kind of culpability otherwise required for the commission of the crime which he is charged with attempting. ... Second, the defendant must have engaged in conduct which constitutes a substantial step toward commission of the crime. A substantial step must be conduct strongly corroborative of the firmness of the defendant’s criminal intent.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“In order for a defendant to be guilty of a criminal attempt, the objective acts performed, without any reliance on the accompanying mens rea [must] mark the defendant's conduct as criminal in nature. The acts should be unique rather than so commonplace that they are engaged in by persons not in violation of the law.... In other words, the defendant's objective conduct, taken as a whole, must unequivocally corroborate the required subjective intent to purchase or sell actual narcotics.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“'An act cannot be characterized as an extrinsic act when the evidence concerning that act and the evidence used to prove the crime charged are inextricably intertwined.'”
2 later decisions 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.