1999 Pa. Super. 227 - Commonwealth v. Stewart’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[w]hen the officers took the defendants into custody and patted them down for security purposes, they did not find any guns on the defendants’ persons. The officers were concerned that the defendants threw the gun out of the car and into the street between the time of the shooting and the time of apprehension by the police. If that were the case, then the police would have had to organize a search of the entire route that the defendants had traveled. The situation arose during a Saturday morning, and people at after-hours nightclubs were already coming out into the streets. There was a risk that a third person would be hurt when coming across the gun, which may have been an automatic that was still cocked and ready to fire.”

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

2. ““the facts and circumstances within the officer’s knowledge are sufficient to warrant a prudent individual in believing that an offense was committed and that the defendant has committed it.” In determining whether probable cause existed in a particular situation, “a court will not look just at one or two individual factors, but will consider the ‘totality of the circumstances’ as they appeared to the arresting officer.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2001 Pa. Super. 85 - Commonwealth v. Lynch

3. “The officers were faced with two equally difficult and dangerous situations: innocent persons finding the gun and getting hurt as they handled it and an officer being injured by the gun as he stepped into the car to turn off the ignition. The officers and the public were in danger if the weapons were not recovered; thus, there was a need for immediate police action.”

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