Case Citator › United States v. Welton Brown

United States v. Welton Brown

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

Declined by some courts
Court
Fifth Circuit
Citation
920 F.2d 1212
Decided
Confirmed treatments
3
Flagged citations read
111 of 111
Citing cases (total)
180
Treatment dates
1998–2008
Declined by some courts
At least one reviewed court has declined to follow this case. No reviewed court has overruled it. United States v. Welton Brown has been fully screened, and its strongest confirmed treatment is declined to follow. All 111 flagged citations were read, with the three confirmed treatments listed below.
More on how this was screened

The Sixth Circuit declined to follow Brown's construction of a district court's authority to anticipate a state sentence. Two later Fifth Circuit opinions confined Brown: United States v. Quintana-Gomez declined to extend it to anticipated federal sentences, and United States v. Candia replaced its pre-Booker abuse-of-discretion review rule with reasonableness review. The other opinions followed or applied Brown, rejected requests to overrule it, or used adverse language for Candia, Quintana-Gomez, or unrelated authorities. In particular, the numerous parentheticals stating that Gall v. United States abrogated Candia, and the later recognition that Setser v. United States abrogated Quintana-Gomez, are not treatments of Brown; Setser instead confirmed Brown's core anticipated-state-sentence rule. Duplicate flagged citations were read and counted separately.

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.

180 later cases cite United States v. Welton Brown; 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 United States v. Welton Brown?

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

Declined to follow

  • The Sixth Circuit declined to follow Brown's reasoning that general sentencing discretion authorizes a federal sentence consecutive to a not-yet-imposed state sentence.

    United States v. Quintero · Sixth Circuit · filed

    We also decline to follow the reasoning of the Fifth or Eleventh Circuit eases addressing this issue. The Fifth Circuit in Brown relied on the district court’s general discretion in choosing between imposing a consecutive or concurrent sentence. See 920 F.2d at 1216-17. We do not believe that this general discretion can trump the express statutory conditions we have discussed.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Limited

  • The Fifth Circuit confined Brown's approval of a sentence consecutive to an anticipated state sentence and declined to extend it to an anticipated federal sentence.

    United States v. Quintana-Gomez · Fifth Circuit · filed

    That the Brown reasoning was predicated largely on principles of dual sovereignty, however, distinguishes the case from that presented here. ... Here, we are presented not with a potential conflict between two sovereigns but with an actual conflict between two federal district courts. ... We therefore hold that § 3854 does not provide a district court authority to order that its sentence run consecutively to an anticipated but not-yet-imposed federal sentence.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The Fifth Circuit confined Brown's pre-Booker abuse-of-discretion review rule by holding that a consecutive sentence is ultimately reviewed for reasonableness after Booker.

    United States v. Candia · Fifth Circuit · filed

    Prior to Booker, we reviewed for abuse of discretion the district courts’ decisions about the § 5G1.3(c) imposition of consecutive or concurrent sentences. United States v. Richardson, 87 F.3d 706, 709 (5th Cir. 1996) (citing United States v. Brown, 920 F.2d 1212, 1216-17 (5th Cir. 1991)); United States v. Lynch, 378 F.3d 445, 447 (5th Cir. 2004) (citing United States v. Rangel, 319 F.3d 710, 714 (5th Cir. 2003)). Under Booker, it is the sentence itself, including its consecutive nature, that is ultimately reviewed for reasonableness.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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