United States v. Eves’s Empirical Analysis
932 F.2d 856 · 1991
Citation profile
35 federal appellate · 2 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions — most recently April 2016 · most notably United States v. Dahlman (1993), United States v. Foree (1995)
35 federal appellate · 2 district · 3 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 21 U.S.C. § 841 (§ 401 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 28 U.S.C. § 1291
Relies on Anderson v. City of Bessemer City · United States v. Leon · United States v. Corley · Eastland Mortgage Co. v. Hart · United States v. Malbrough
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... In this case of statutory construction, we decline the invitation to accept the notion that Congress intended a highly scientific meaning to plant life similar to what gynecologists and obstetricians and ecclesiastics and philosophers have grappled with in the context of other highly publicized litigation.... Appellant has not suggested to us, nor has our independent research disclosed, any aspect of legislative history that supports his theory that Congress intended “plant” to be construed other than by its plain and ordinary dictionary meaning. Nor is there any reason to conclude that such an interpretation was intended. This is a statute we are construing; we are examining, a congressionally declared code of conduct with clearly defined penalties. We do not even begin to believe that Congress intended an abstruse interpretation that would require police officers to possess infrared gas analyzers to determine whether gas exchange is occurring in marijuana growth or, to undergo botanical training in order to observe marijuana, in [the appellant’s expert witness’] formula, over a period of time to see whether increments of new tissue appear. As Judge Devitt noted in [United States v.] Fitol, [ 733 F.Supp. 1312 (D.Minn.1990),] the legislative purpose was to remedy the problems associated with determining the weight of marijuana — specifically, whether seeds and stems should be weighed in the mix — and to supplant this test with a more simple method; a method providing that”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[B]y changing the determining factor from weight to number of “plants regardless of weight” Congress intended to punish growers of marijuana by the scale or potential of their operation and not just by the weight of the plants seized at a given moment. Congress must have found a defendant who is growing 100 newly planted marijuana plants to be just as culpable as one who has successfully grown 100 kilograms of marijuana.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The common everyday meaning of "plant" is a living organism which belongs to the vegetable kingdom in the broad sense, cf. [sic] Websters New International Dictionary, 1881, def. n. 3 (2d ed. unabridged 1961).”
1 later decision 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.