Howard v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

35 federal appellate · 2 district · 5 state decisions

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

1. ““Not only in Blitz v. U. S. were cumulative sentences imposed, but such was also the judgment of the court in Re Henry, 123 U. S. 372 , 8 S. Ct. 142 , and in Re Mills, 135 U. S. 253 , 10 S. Ct. 762 , and in other cases that might be referred to. And, while the authority to pronounce such judgment was not made a specific question in the cases, it was perfectly apparent in the eases that such practice had been pursued, and the Supreme Court of the United States, according to its own rules, reserves the right to’ ‘notice a plain error not assigned or specified.’ And, if the courts of the United States be without authority to pronounce cumulative sentences upon convictions of separate offenses, the error was so vital and so obvious in the cases that the court would certainly have felt called upon to notice it in the interest of the accused. Railway Co. v. Warren, 137 U. S. 348 , 11 S. Ct. 96 .””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Ex parte Rice

2. ““To it is coniided tlie power to adapt the punishment to the degree of crime. It may sentence the full penalty upon one offense. It may, though it is not required to, do more upon three offenses, and in a single sentence .of one day, or of eighteen months, or three times eighteen months, it may express its views of the criminality of a defendant, and, to use the language of the statute, 'proportion the punishment especially to the degree in which the abuse of the post office establishment’ enters as an instrument ‘in the defendant’s fraudulent scheme and device.’ ””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Hyde v. United States

3. ““It was entirely competent, according to the Henry Case, to charge the petitioner with 24 separate offenses committed within the same six calendar months in eight separate indictments containing three counts each; and upon conviction the court might pronounce eight sentences, one on each indictment, just as was done in the case at bar, and the judgments would be neither erroneous nor void.” •”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Walker v. United States