165 Md. App. 164 - Cross v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The case sub judiee is distinguishable from Florida v. J.L., supra. Here the informant’s basis of knowledge was established, i.e., he told Officer Knox that he saw appellant brandish a gun. Second, the informant confronted Officer Knox directly and made no effort to hide his identity. By doing so, he exposed himself to the very real possibility that he would be questioned and his identity revealed. Moreover, even if he had balked at giving his name to the police, his identity could still have been ascertained easily because he drove a car. Unlike the situation in Florida v. J.L., the informant, by coming forward to the police, put himself in a position where he could be held accountable if his information proved false. Thus, the likelihood that the information was reliable was much greater than if the information had been obtained from a truly anonymous tipster such as the one described in the J.L. case. For this reason, an informant who makes a face-to-face report of a crime to a police officer is significantly less likely than an anonymous telephone tipster to be merely engaging in a prank or otherwise trying to mislead the police.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 178 Md. App. 156 - State v. Jenkins