Williams v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 2 district · 12 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"We conclude that the defendant, Williams, had no expectation of privacy in his boots that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. The boots were in the custody of the Richmond City Sheriff pursuant to administrative booking policies and procedures. We hold that when a person, such as the defendant, has been lawfully arrested and his property has been lawfully seized by law enforcement personnel pursuant to that arrest, the arrestee has no reasonable expectation of privacy in that property, and later examination of the property by another law enforcement official does not violate the Fourth Amendment.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Wallace v. State · State v. Jackson

2. “[T]he touchstone of [Fourth] Amendment analysis has been the question whether a person has a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Cole v. Commonwealth

3. “Amendment does not protect the merely subjective expectation of privacy, but only those expectations that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Cole v. Commonwealth