Daniel Leveto’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 district · 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 72 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Summers itself is largely off point: it relied heavily on the fact that the warrant authorized a search for contraband, which meant that there was reason to believe that crimes were taking place in the home, which in turn allowed the detention of its resident.... This reasoning does not apply here, where the search warrant merely sought evidence of a crime at a public establishment and that evidence was unrelated to any of the individuals then present there. In addition, the detention of Allen did not advance an orderly completion of the search, as there was no indication that Allen even knew where the videotapes were located.... The only law enforcement interest relevant to our case, and indeed the only part of the Summers Court’s reasoning that is applicable to the facts here, is minimizing the risk of harm to the officers. Indeed, the District Court relied solely on this interest in denying Allen’s motion to suppress. We conclude that it was correct to do so because, per Rettele , in certain situations safety concerns alone may authorize a brief detention of the occupants of an establishment during execution of a search warrant, and the distinction between a search for contraband and a search for evidence is largely immaterial. .... Finally, just as the brief duration of the detention in Rettele was deemed reasonable under the circumstances, the detention here was just long enough for the police to ensure their safety and collect the evidence they sought. Rettele ... couns”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Fautz

2. “A primary law enforcement interest served by such detention is the prevention of flight in the event that incriminating evidence is found during the search. In this connection, the distinction between searches for contraband and searches for evidence is material. It is not uncommon for a search for contraband to produce items that justify an immediate arrest of the owner or resident of the premises, and a person who anticipates that a search may imminently result in his or her arrest has a strong incentive to flee. By contrast, a search for evidence—particularly complicated documentary evidence—is much less likely to uncover items that lead to an immediate arrest. Thus, even if the search is successful, the suspect may well remain at liberty for some time until the evidence is examined and an indictment is obtained. As a result, the incentive to flee is greatly diminished. In Dr. Leveto’s case, the agents sought evidence of a suspected tax evasion scheme. A search of this type is unlikely to produce an immediate arrest, and in this case, although the agents allegedly seized thousands of pages of documents and many computer files, ... Dr. Leveto ... was [not] arrested. Similarly, there was no compelling need to detain Dr. Leveto to protect the safety of the agents. If the agents had been conducting an investigation into a type of offense often accompanied by violence, detention for some length of time might have been reasonable. By the same token, if the agents had possessed i”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Williamson v. State

3. “accept the allegations of the complaint as true and draw all reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Ranke v. Sanofi-Synthelabo Inc.