United States v. Boatwright’s Empirical Analysis
822 F.2d 862 · 1987
Citation profile
31 federal appellate · 6 district · 11 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently October 2025 · most notably Dyer v. Calderon (1998), United States v. Johnson (1994)
31 federal appellate · 6 district · 11 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 26 U.S.C. § 5861 (§ 201 of the Gun Control Act of 1968)
Relies on Nix v. Williams · United States v. Echegoyen · United States v. Andrade · United States v. Merriweather
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 57 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he existence of two independent investigations at the time of discovery is not... a necessary predicate to the inevitable discovery exception,”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'arise from circumstances other than those disclosed by the illegal search itself.'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““There is nothing outside the unlawful search itself that points to the inevitable discovery of weapons in control of this defendant. Applying the inevitable discovery doctrine here would, therefore, permit the government to ignore search requirements at any convenient point in the investigation, and would go well beyond the present scope of the doctrine. This we decline to do. We note also that, as a factual matter, the assumption that the officers would have found Rickie with the shotguns ... is most unrealistic. Rickie would not have waited patiently beside his weapons for an agent to arrive with a warrant. As a factual matter ... the evidence cannot be admitted under the doctrine of inevitable discovery.””
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.