124 Md. App. 258 - State v. Alexander’s Empirical Analysis
1998
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 46 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 48 later decisions — most recently June 2018 · most notably State v. Ryon (2005), 21 Cal. 4th 464 - People v. Ray (1999)
2 federal appellate · 46 state decisions — followed in 10 states
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
Relies on Ornelas v. United States · Mincey v. Arizona · South Dakota v. Opperman · Missouri v. Continential Insurance Cos. · Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco
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 48 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a]n objective standard as to the reasonableness of the officer’s belief must be applied. Thus, the question is whether there were reasonable grounds to believe that some kind of an emergency existed, that is, whether there is evidence which would lead a prudent and reasonable official to see a need to act. The officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[A] warrant is not required to break down a door to enter a burning home to rescue occupants or extinguish a fire, to prevent a shooting or to bring emergency aid to an injured person. The need to protect or preserve life or avoid serious injury is justification for what would be otherwise illegal absent an exigency or emergency.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“Communities have always looked to local police to perform social services unrelated or at best partially related to enforcing criminal law. “Community caretaking” denotes a wide range of everyday police activities undertaken to aid those in danger of physical harm, to preserve property, or “to create and maintain a feeling of security in the community.” It includes things like the mediation of noise disputes, the response to complaints about stray and injured animals, and the provision of assistance to the ill or injured. Police must frequently “care for those who cannot care for themselves: the destitute, the inebriated, the addicted ... and the very young.” They are often charged with taking lost property into their possession; they not infrequently see to the removal of abandoned property. In those places where social disorganization is at its highest, police are even called upon “to serve as surrogate parent or other relative, and to fill in for social workers, housing inspectors, attorneys, physicians, and psychiatrists.” Community caretaking, then, is an essential part of the functioning of local police. It in fact occupies such a high proportion of police time that one can even question “the value of viewing the police primarily as a part of the criminal justice system.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.