United States v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
864 F.2d 843 · 1989
Citation profile
28 federal appellate · 5 district · 39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 86 later decisions — most recently April 2024 · most notably State v. Sivri (1994), State v. Mooney (1991)
28 federal appellate · 5 district · 39 state decisions — followed in 25 states
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. § 924 · 21 U.S.C. § 841 (§ 401 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 26 U.S.C. § 5861 (§ 201 of the Gun Control Act of 1968)
Relies on United States v. Young · Abel v. United States · Michigan v. Chesternut · Raphan v. United States · Zerman v. Melton
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 86 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he test for abandonment in the search and seizure context is distinct from the property law notion of abandonment: it is possible for a person to retain a property interest in an item, but nonetheless to relinquish his or her reasonable expectation of privacy in the object.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“[t]he law obviously does not insist that a person assertively clutch an object in order to retain the protection of the fourth amendment.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“words spoken, acts done, and other objective facts.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.