United States v. Downs’s Empirical Analysis
151 F.3d 1301 · 1998
Citation profile
19 federal appellate · 7 district · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 52 later decisions — most recently July 2020 · most notably State v. Moore (2000), United States v. West (2000)
19 federal appellate · 7 district · 15 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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1291
Relies on United States v. Ross · United States v. Nielsen · United States v. Parker · United States v. Morin
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 52 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he smell of burnt marijuana is generally consistent with personal use of marijuana in the passenger compartment of an automobile. In such a case, therefore, there is no fair probability that the trunk of the car contains marijuana and an officer must limit the search to the compartment absent corroborating evidence of contraband. When, on the other hand, an officer encounters, as was the case here, the overpowering smell of raw marijuana, there is a fair probability that the car is being used to transport large quantities of marijuana and that the marijuana has been secreted in places other than the passenger compartment. Accordingly, in such circumstances, a search of the trunk is appropriate.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“is defined by the object of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to believe it may be found.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Probable cause to search a vehicle is established if, under the totality of the circumstances, there is a fair probability that the car contains contraband or evidence.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.