State v. Freeman’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

24 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Rather than fashioning a specific restriction relating to defendant’s choice of residence, however, the court turned over to a probation officer the complete power to determine defendant’s residence, with no guiding standards. Under this condition, the probation officer can require defendant to live in a specific place, within or without the State of Vermont, for reasons unrelated to rehabilitation or the prevention of further criminal offenses. Condition 18 goes beyond implementation. In effect, it gives open-ended authority to the probation officer to create any location-of-residence probation condition the officer deems appropriate. It is this type of wholesale delegation that other courts have struck down. . . . [T]his condition is unduly restrictive of the probationer’s liberty and autonomy and is not fine-tuned to the specific rehabilitative and preventative goals applicable to this ease. The court is capable of creating more precise standards to guide the probation officer in imposing restrictions on defendant’s residence. Unlike interpersonal contact, which is intimately connected with associational rights, the changing of one’s residence is not an incident of daily life; there is no reason why the court cannot anticipate the relevant issues and construct a proper condition. This is not an instance where the court must authorize a probation officer to use substantial discretionary power to implement the probation condition.”

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