Ragland v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 1 district · 19 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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[We] must give great deference to the warrant-issuing judge's findings of probable cause and should not be reversed unless arbitrarily exercised. Courts should review the sufficiency of an affidavit underlying a search warrant in a commonsense, rather than hypertechnical, manner. The traditional standard for reviewing an issuing judge's finding of probable cause has been that so long as the magistrate had a substantial basis for concluding that a search warrant would uncover evidence of wrongdoing, the Fourth Amendment requires no more. Whether probable cause exists is determined by examining the totality of the circumstances. Furthermore, the test for probable cause is whether there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.... Probable cause does not require certainty that a crime has been committed or that evidence will be present in the place to be searched.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Smith v. Commonwealth

2. “It is the conclusion of the committee that, in many cases, CABL is a reasonably accurate way of determining whether two bullets could have come from the same compositionally indistinguishable volume of lead. It may thus in appropriate cases provide additional evidence that ties a suspect to a crime, or in some cases evidence that tends to exonerate a suspect. CABL does not, however, have the unique specificity of techniques such as DNA typing to be used as standalone evidence.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. United States v. Berry

3. “The available data do not support any statement that a crime bullet came from, or is likely to have come from, a particular box of ammunition, and references to “boxes” of ammunition in any form are seriously misleading.... Testimony that the crime bullet came from the defendant’s box or from a box manufactured at the same time, is also objectionable because it may be understood as implying a substantial probability that the bullet came from the defendant’s box.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Glendale More Jr. v. State of Iowa