United States v. Patterson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 federal appellate · 2 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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The Fourth Amendment applies to seizures of the person, including brief investigatory stops such as the stop of a vehicle. An investigatory stop must be justified by some objective manifestation that the person stopped is, or is about to be, engaged in criminal activity .... the totality of the circumstances — the whole picture — must be taken into account. Based upon that whole picture, the detaining officers must have a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity. The idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion contains two elements, each of which must be present before a stop is permissible. First, the assessment must be based upon all of the circumstances. The analysis proceeds with various objective observations, information from police reports, if such are available, and consideration of the modes or patterns of operation of certain kinds of lawbreakers. From these data, a trained officer draws inferences and makes deductions — inferences and deductions that might well elude an untrained person .... The second element contained in the idea that an assessment of the whole picture must yield a particularized suspicion is the concept that the process just described must raise a suspicion that the particular individual being stopped is engaged in wrongdoing.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 692 F. Supp. 2d 915 - United States v. Elmore

2. ““This Court is aware that under the totality of the circumstances test it is possible that ‘objective facts, meaningless to the untrained’ can provide the basis for reasonable suspicion. However, some factors may be ‘outrightly dismissed,’ because they are ‘so innocent or susceptible to varying interpretations as to be innocuous.’... It is possible for factors, although insufficient individually, to add up to a reasonable suspicion— that is the nature of the totality of the circumstances test. But we think it impossible for a combination of wholly innocent factors to combine into a suspicious conglomeration unless there are concrete reasons for such an interpretation.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 692 F. Supp. 2d 915 - United States v. Elmore

3. “Patterson walking away from the police when they got out of their unmarked car constitutes a factor to be outrightly dismissed,”

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