Nease v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 state decisions

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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “As Professor LaFave explains in his work on search and seizure, the fact that a police officer may have an ulterior motive for enforcing the law is irrelevant for Fourth Amendment purposes — even under the doctrine of pretext searches — unless the defendant proves that this ulterior motive prompted the officer to depart from reasonable police practices[.] ... We assume for purposes of argument that [the officer] decided to follow Nease’s vehicle because he suspected that Nease might be intoxicated.... But [the officer’s] decision to follow Nease’s vehicle did not infringe Nease’s Fourth Amendment rights. [The officer] observed that Nease had a non-functioning brake light. [He] pulled Nease over to cite him for this traffic offense — -a stop that was supported by probable cause. Even if we were to subscribe to the doctrine of “pretext stops,” the question would be whether Nease proved that [the officer] departed from reasonable police practice when he decided to stop Nease because of the non-functioning brake light.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Grohs v. State

2. “Nease presented no evidence to suggest that police officers never stop motorists to issue citations for equipment violations, or that they would never do so under the circumstances of this case. Moreover, Nease has never asserted (much less shown) that [the officer] manipulated the traffic stop in this case by abnormally expanding or extending his contact with Nease so that he could investigate Nease’s potential drunk driving. There is no evidence that [the officer’s] contact with Nease exceeded the normal duration or scope of a traffic stop for an equipment violation. As far as we can tell from this record, it was immediately apparent to [the officer], when he contacted Nease during the traffic stop, that Nease might be impaired. And because [the officer’s] initial contact with Nease gave him reasonable suspicion to believe that Nease was driving while under the influence, [the officer] could properly ask Nease to perform field sobriety tests.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Grohs v. State