329 Pa. Super. 101 - Commonwealth v. Bunch’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently June 2021
19 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Brinegar v. United States · Johnson v. United States · Angrist v. United States · Filmon v. Florida · Red Ball Motor Freight, Inc. v. Shannon
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Probable cause may justify the arrest of more than one person. If, for example, a policeman sees A and B bending over a dead man and each accuses the other of killing the victim, there is probable cause for the arrest of either or both and the arrest of A does not preclude the arrest of B. Similarly, if A is found one block north of a recently robbed bank and matches the description of the robber, the arrest of A does not preclude the subsequent arrest of B who also matches the description and is found one block south of the bank. In either case, it would be reasonable for the police to arrest both A and B on probable cause even though they believe that only one of them committed the crime. The purpose of the arrest, however, is not the traditional and statutory purpose of an arrest: to charge the arrestee with crime. Rather, it is to initiate a short-term process of sorting out, usually on the scene, to determine which person should be charged with crime, i.e., arrested in the full sense of the word. Thus the initial ‘arrest’ is really in the nature of a stop or detention rather than a true arrest. Although multiple arrests may be reasonable in certain circumstances, the law does not allow dragnet arrests of many suspects for investigation of each. Factors to separate the reasonable from the unreasonable have been well stated elsewhere: “Other factors may be important in determining the validity of multiple arrests in a given situation. The degree of certainty that the actua”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“A sees B and C bending over a dead man, D. B and C each accuse the other of murdering D. A is not sure that either B or C did the killing, but he has a reasonable suspicion that either B or C killed D. A is privileged to arrest either or both.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“While the law requires that probable cause have a fairly narrow focus, thereby precluding, for example, dragnet operations, we do not believe that the focus must in all situations narrow down to a single suspect.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.