Hale v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 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 6 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““As we have seen, the officers not only saw the imprints of the jars on the sides of the sacks, but they also heard the rattling they made, and these facts, together with the location and other surrounding circumstances, might be sufficient to authorize them to arrest defendant without a warrant on the ground that the offense was committed in their presence; but whether so or not, when defendant put down his sack and said to the officers, ‘You’ve got me,’ it was tantamount to a confession that his sack contained contraband goods, otherwise he had committed no offense for which the officers could ‘get’ him. They were authorized to arrest him, and under numerous opinions of this court they • had the right to make the search and whatever evidence they found in doing so would be competent. There is, therefore, no merit in this contention.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Campbell v. Commonwealth