United States v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The defendant's problem is marijuana ... we have our doubts that imprisonment is an appropriate treatment for a marijuana habit.... The 29 months that he served in prison beginning in 2009 did not break him of his habit; what is the basis for thinking that 14 more months in prison will? Maybe with a job and a family and greater maturity he'll outgrow it, or reduce his consumption to a level at which it has no significant behavior or psychological ill effects. The fact that he's impressed his employers suggests that he can function even with the habit, in which event it might have been better had the judge not imposed a prison sentence but instead had ordered a stricter regimen of treatment for the defendant's drug habit.... The defendant disobeyed the terms of his supervised release repeatedly, but his current profile is not that of a dangerous criminal, and the utility of his continued imprisonment is difficult to see.”

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