State v. Sund’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

67 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 67 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “A trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress will be reversed on appeal only if it is clearly erroneous. This Court defers to the trial court’s factual findings and credibility determinations, and considers all evidence and reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the trial court’s ruling. Whether conduct violates the Fourth Amendment is an issue of law that this Court reviews de novo.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Cato · State v. Pesce

2. “Even if a law enforcement officer does not have reasonable suspicion to further detain a driver at the completion of a traffic stop, the officer may question the driver if the encounter has turned into a consensual one. So long as the person is free to leave, the officer can talk to him and is free to ask whether he has contraband on his person, or in his car, or in his residence. This does not mean that an officer is free to involuntarily detain a driver without reasonable suspicion under the guise of simply engaging in a voluntary conversation. A court must consider all the circumstances surrounding the encounter to determine whether the police conduct would have communicated to a reasonable person that the person was not free to decline the officers’ requests or otherwise terminate the encounter.”

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

3. “Here, too, considering the totality of the circumstances, a reasonable person in Ms. Sund’s and Ms. Wolfe’s position would not have felt free to leave at the time that they opened the trunk in response to the officer’s demand that if they did not do so he would call the canine unit to come search. It was nearly 11:00 p.m. on a cold night in late February. The two women were traveling alone on an interstate highway running through a rural area of Missouri. Neither was from Missouri, and in fact, Ms. Sund was visiting the United States from Sweden. They had nowhere to go and would have had to abandon their rented car and them possessions if they did leave.”

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