Plakas v. Drinski’s Empirical Analysis
19 F.3d 1143 · 1994
Citation profile
34 federal appellate · 11 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 116 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Thornton v. United States (2004), Dickerson v. Mcclellan (1996)
34 federal appellate · 11 district · 6 state decisions
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 Graham v. Connor · Tennessee v. Garner · United States v. Martinez-Fuerte · Illinois v. Lafayette · Salas v. Carpenter
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 116 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]he award of summary judgment to the defense in deadly force cases may be made only with particular care where the officer defendant is the only witness left alive to testify.... [A] court must undertake a fairly critical assessment of the forensic evidence, the officer’s original reports or statement and the opinions of experts to decide whether the officer’s testimony could reasonably be rejected at trial.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[w]e do not believe that the Fourth Amendment requires the use of the least or even a less deadly alternative so long as the use of deadly force is reasonable under Tennessee v. Garner and Graham v. Connor. ...”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he Fourth Amendment does not require officers to use the least intrusive alternatives in search and seizure cases. The only test is whether what the police officers actually did was reasonable.”
5 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.