Rico Johnson v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 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 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In September 2014, the City/County Investigative Bureau in Seminole County (the "CCIB") began investigating the sale and distribution of cocaine that allegedly involved Appellant, co-conspirator Edward Howard, Jr., and more than one hundred other suspects. A wiretap on Howard's telephone allowed the CCIB to record calls and receive data about intercepted phone calls, including the date and time of the call, whether it was an incoming or outgoing call from the wiretapped phone, and the numbers dialed by the wiretapped phone. The investigating agents correlated the suspects' names with phone numbers and video surveillance of them and relayed that information to Agents Matt Scovel, the lead investigative agent, and Kevin Pederson, the administrator of the software system that intercepted the phone calls. During the investigation, Agents Scovel and Pederson listened to thousands of intercepted phone calls involving the suspects. Based on the intercepted phone calls, the CCIB executed a search warrant at Howard's home on a day it suspected that Appellant would be delivering a supply of cocaine. Although cannabis and cash were found in the home, they found no cocaine. During the search, Agent Scovel spoke with Appellant for approximately five minutes but Agent Scovel "did most of the talking" because Appellant "felt uncomfortable talking to [him]." At the same time, Agent Pederson had a five-minute conversation with Howard, who spoke for approximately half of the time. This was the”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Rico Johnson v. State of Florida

2. “In Evans , the state made the decision not to offer the exemplar telephone recordings into evidence. Had the recordings been admitted, Evans would have been directly, factually analogous to Ruffin [ v. State , 549 So.2d 250 (Fla. 5th DCA 1989),] and Alvarez [ v. State , 147 So.3d 537 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014) ]. The jury would have been able to make the same comparison that was made by the police because the police enjoyed no expertise or special familiarity with the voice. Because the state made the decision not to give the exemplar to the jury, the Evans court treated it as an invasion-of-the-province-of-the-jury case. In other words, it would circumvent the intent of the evidence code to allow the state to disadvantage the jury by withholding tangible evidence in its possession so as to justify the use of otherwise inadmissible lay testimony. Simply put, Evans is a case where the police merely compared one recording to another, an exercise that was well within the province of the jury, had it been given the opportunity to do so.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Rico Johnson v. State of Florida