In re Fried’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

73 federal appellate · 8 district · 17 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 138 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The government further argues that an indictment founded upon such illicit evidence will do the applicant no harm, since such evidence will not be admitted at the trial which follows the indictment. That is an astonishingly callous argument which ignores the obvious. For a wrongful indictment is no laughing matter; often it works a grievous, irreparable injury to the person indicted. The stigma cannot be easily erased. * * * Prosecutors have an immense discretion in instituting criminal proceedings which may lastingly besmirch reputations. That discretion is almost completely unfettered. It should surely not extend so far as to preclude judicial interference with a prosecutor’s aim to induce an indictment by offering to a grand jury evidence which is the product of illegal acts of federal officers.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Jones v. Murdoch · 230 F. Supp. 91 - Hinchcliff v. Clarke

2. ““ * * * I agree that now, in spite of much professional opinion to the contrary, it has become settled law, as my brother Frank says, not only that the victim may reclaim documents and other property seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment, but that, when these are contraband and need not be returned to him, he may in advance of trial and even of an indictment, secure from a court an order preventing their use as evidence. Although, so far as I know, the same rule has not as yet been extended to confessions procured in violation of the Fifth Amendment, I feel too much the force of consistency not to take this added step.” 1 (Emphasis supplied)”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Austin v. United States · United States v. Carabasi

3. “The `third degree' and cognate devices alarmingly persist in this country. The reports of the United States Supreme Court alone disclose eight cases in the six years 1940-1945 in which convictions were reversed because of the use of coerced confessions. The indications are that the following statement, made in 1930 by a Committee of the American Bar Association, could be made today: `It is conservative to say that for every one of the cases which do by a long chance find a place in the official reports, there are many hundreds, and probably thousands of instances of the use of the third degree in some form * * *.' Until such miserable misbehavior is stamped out, it will remain an empty boast that we have, and that we respect, a Constitution which guarantees civil liberties, blocks representatives of government from lawless incursions on the rights of the individual. As possible prosecution of offending officers and civil actions for damages against them seem to have no practical value, the courts, unfortunately, can do little to eliminate these evils; but what slight powers they have to do so they should vigorously exercise.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States ex rel. Santo Caminito v. Murphy