United States v. Walker’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate ·

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

1. “In this case, it is clear that Stewart’s actions and conduct led to the victims’ deaths. He supplied his distributors and relied upon them to resell to end users. It was certainly understood that recipients of drugs Stewart provided would resell, share, or otherwise offer the drugs to unknown or unauthorized users. Like our sister circuits, we acknowledge that our analysis might differ if a defendant’s participation in the chain of distribution is especially removed from a victim’s resulting death, as in the cases of Walker and Gladney. In such cases, “a court might conclude that it would not be consistent with congressional intent to apply the mandatory 20-year minimum sentence.” But Stewart’s' case does not require us to weigh these concerns. The' victims’ deaths were directly caused by Stewart’s criminal conduct; indeed, they were part of the ordinary course of business for the conspiracy he led. Therefore Stewart is liable for the deaths and we affirm the district court’s application of the penalty to his sentence.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 89 F. Supp. 3d 993 - Stewart v. United States

2. “d. Death and serious bodily injury resulted from the use of the heroin distributed in furtherance of the conspiracy, including the heroin overdose deaths of the following individuals:”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 89 F. Supp. 3d 993 - Stewart v. United States