State v. Geraw’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

33 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 33 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In assessing the constitutionality of technologically enhanced government surveillance in a particular case, we must identify the values that are at risk, and vest the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test with those values. In the instant case, defendant’s conversation with the informant took place in defendant’s home, and there is no indication in the record to suggest that he expected the conversations to be transmitted beyond the immediate environs, especially not through electronic enhancement. Clearly, he did not “knowingly expose” the conversation to the outside world, and therefore exhibited a clear subjective expectation of privacy. The objective component of the ... test was met as well. We have stated that the reasonableness analysis must be tied to identifiable constitutional values. One such value under [the state constitution] concerns the deeply-rooted legal and societal principle that the coveted privacy of the home should be especially protected. [F]reedom of speech is undermined where people fear to speak unconstrainedly in what they suppose to be the privacy of home and office. We conclude that warrantless electronic participant monitoring conducted in a home offends the core values of [our constitution]. Accordingly, where the State uses an agent to enter a home for the purposes of eliciting and electronically transmitting evidence from an occupant of the home, it is the burden of the State to obtain a warrant upon probable cause prior to conducting that ”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 221 W. Va. 70 - State v. Mullens · State v. Bauder

2. “[I]n circumstances not disclosing any speaker’s intent to cast words beyond a narrow compass of known listeners, we conclude that it is objectively reasonable to expect that conversational interchange in a private home will not be invaded surreptitiously by warrantless electronic transmission or recording. The remaining question is whether “one party consent” so alters the balance as to obviate the need for a warrant requirement. It does not. Such consent only affords the State a person willing to transport the invisible instruments of eavesdropping into “earshot.” ... [T]he consent exception puts the conversational liberty of every person in the hands of any officer lucky enough to find a consenting informant. ... [T]he Commonwealth relies ... on [several] arguments. None is persuasive. The first of these arguments asserts, according to the Commonwealth, that because the person subject to the warrant-less interception is a “wrongdoer,” [he] should be made to bear the risk of betrayal. This argument proceeds from a pernicious assumption, that anyone subjected to surveillance by police is, because of that fact, necessarily a “wrongdoer.” It is the purpose of the warrant requirement ... to subject police suspicions to the scrutiny of a neutral and detached magistrate instead of [leaving them to be] judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. Little would be left of anyone’s justifiable reliance on privacy ... if everyone must real i”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 221 W. Va. 70 - State v. Mullens

3. “reflects a deeply-rooted historical judgment that the decision to invade . . . privacy . . . should normally be made by a neutral magistrate, not by the agent of the search itself”

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