United States v. Lighte’s Empirical Analysis
782 F.2d 367 · 1986
Citation profile
53 federal appellate · 6 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 103 later decisions — most recently July 2025 · most notably United States v. Friedman (1988), United States v. Boone (1991)
53 federal appellate · 6 district · 7 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 18 U.S.C. § 1623
Relies on Bronston v. United States · Strong v. United States · White v. Morgan · United States v. Williams · United States v. Sampol
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 103 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“is not a phrase with a meaning about which men of ordinary intellect could agree, nor one which could be used with mutual understanding by a questioner and answerer unless it were defined at the time it were sought and offered as testimony.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[w]hen a line of questioning is so vague as to be 'fundamentally ambiguous,' the answers associated with the questions posed may be insufficient as a matter of law to support [a] perjury conviction.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[i]n determining the meaning a declarant gives to a question, a jury need not examine isolated segments of the question and answer exchange, but may view it within the context of the entire line of questioning.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.