Case Citator › Hill v. United States

Hill v. United States

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
368 U.S. 424
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
111 of 111
Citing cases (total)
111
Treatment dates
1992
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Hill v. United States is limited in the Fourth Circuit: that court confined Hill's Rule 35(a) category for otherwise invalid sentences to sentences that are ambiguous or internally contradictory. All 111 flagged citations have been read.
More on how this was screened

The confirmed limitation is listed below; other citing courts continued to apply Hill's rule for collateral relief.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

111 later cases cite Hill v. United States; 111 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Hill v. United States?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Limited

  • The Fourth Circuit read Hill's category of otherwise invalid sentences to allow a Rule 35(a) motion only for sentences that are ambiguous or internally contradictory.

    United States v. Joseph J. Pavlico · Fourth Circuit · filed

    Hill v. United States, 368 U.S. 424, 430, 82 S.Ct. 468, 472, 7 L.Ed.2d 417 (1962) (rejecting Rule 35(a) challenge where “[t]he punishment meted out was not in excess of that prescribed by the relevant statutes, multiple terms were not imposed for the same offense, nor were the terms of the sentence itself legally or constitutionally invalid in any other respect.”). The clear import of these cases, as the treatise writers have recognized, is that a Rule 35(a) motion challenging an illegal sentence may be brought only when the sentence imposed exceeds the statutorily-authorized limits, violates the Double Jeopardy Clause, or is ambiguous or internally contradictory.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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