## Facts

- *United States v. Wilson*, 13 F.4th 961 (2021), is a published federal appellate decision in a criminal case captioned with the United States as the prosecution and Wilson as the defendant.
- The available casebook-style excerpt (as reflected in the cited secondary source) does not include the underlying facts or a full procedural history of Wilson’s prosecution and appeal.
- The excerpt expressly signals that factual background for the events leading to Wilson’s case appears in a related state-court decision: *People v. Wilson*, 56 Cal. App. 5th 128 (2020).
- Because the excerpt omits the narrative of the investigation, charges, pretrial rulings, trial or plea proceedings, and sentencing details, those items cannot be stated reliably from the provided materials alone.
- The excerpt likewise does not supply the district court’s specific rulings that were challenged on appeal (for example, suppression rulings, trial evidentiary rulings, or Sentencing Guidelines calculations), even though the published federal opinion resolves at least one dispositive appellate question.

## Issues

1. What dispositive legal question did the federal court of appeals decide in *United States v. Wilson*, 13 F.4th 961 (2021), as framed by the full opinion (not included in the excerpted materials)?
2. What rule of law did the court apply to resolve that question, and how did the court apply that rule to the record before it?
3. What was the court’s ultimate disposition of Wilson’s appeal (e.g., affirmed, reversed, vacated, or remanded) as stated in the opinion’s holding and judgment?

## Decision

- The excerpted materials do not include the court’s stated holding, reasoning, or final disposition in *United States v. Wilson*, 13 F.4th 961 (2021).
- The secondary-source summary indicates that the opinion contains (in its complete version) an issue statement, a rule statement, and a holding with reasoning, but those components are not available from the excerpt supplied here.
- As presented, the only confirmed “decision-level” information is that a federal appellate court issued a published decision at 13 F.4th 961 (2021) in *United States v. Wilson*, and that readers are directed to *People v. Wilson*, 56 Cal. App. 5th 128 (2020), for factual background not reproduced in the excerpt.

## Legal Principles

- A case brief should not import missing facts or holdings from a different decision; when a federal opinion’s excerpt omits background and references a related case, the related case may supply context, but the controlling rule and disposition must be taken from the federal opinion itself.
- When an excerpt lacks an issue statement and holding, a responsible brief should identify those omissions and avoid stating the “rule,” “application,” or “disposition” as if they were known.
- Proper attribution matters: factual background drawn from *People v. Wilson* (a California Court of Appeal case) is not, by itself, the holding or rule of *United States v. Wilson* (a federal case), unless the federal court expressly adopts those facts or makes them part of its analysis.
- Any complete statement of standards of review, the precise question presented, and the judgment (affirmance, reversal, vacatur, remand, or mixed result) requires consulting the full text of *United States v. Wilson*, 13 F.4th 961 (2021), rather than relying on a truncated excerpt.

## Conclusion

Because the provided materials for *United States v. Wilson*, 13 F.4th 961 (2021), omit the factual background, issue statement, rule, and holding, an accurate case brief can only report that the case is a published federal appellate decision and that the excerpt directs readers to *People v. Wilson*, 56 Cal. App. 5th 128 (2020), for background facts; completing the brief requires the full federal opinion to state the actual issue decided, the rule applied, the court’s reasoning, and the disposition.


United States v. Wilson, 13 F.4th 961 (2021)