State v. Gilchrist’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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. “The officers had information, apparently from regular police transmission sources, that defendant may have been involved in a homicide, that he may be armed, and that Nebraska authorities desired more information. They further knew that defendant, about a year earlier, had been involved in a firearms-related incident near an “after hours joint” similar to the one above the Bar-B-Q King. They could reasonably have approached defendant’s car initially to positively identify defendant for the legitimate police purpose of informing Nebraska authorities that he was in St. Paul, or for finding out why, at that extremely early hour, he was again outside an “after hours joint.” Given defendant’s violent history, and the nature of the crime alleged against him, the police could have reasonably feared for their safety and ordered the defendant out of the car to frisk him as part of a legitimate investigative stop.”

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

2. “Terry v. Ohio provides that a police officer can lawfully make a forcible investigative stop of an individual and frisk him for weapons on less than traditional probable cause if he is “able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant [the] intrusion.” 392 U.S. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1880. “The officer need not be absolutely certain that' the individual is armed; the issue is whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger.” Id. at 27, 88 S.Ct. at 1883.”

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

3. “could hardly be viewed as a potential assailant after he had returned to his vehicle and knew he had not been detained by the police.”

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