State v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1997
Citation profile
39 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 39 later decisions — most recently June 2022 · most notably Longshore v. State (2007), In Re David S. (2002)
39 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 Terry v. Ohio · Delaware v. Prouse · Maryland v. Wilson · United States v. Villamonte-Marquez · 106 Md. App. 665 - Smith v. State
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 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[T]he objective is to discover weapons readily available to a suspect that may be used against the officer, not to ferret out carefully concealed items that could not be accessed without some difficulty. General exploratory searches are not permitted, and police officers must distinguish between the need to protect themselves and the desire to uncover incriminating evidence.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“"The reasonableness of a Terry stop and frisk ... must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. In any event, the proper balance between the sometimes competing interests of the police officer and the individual requires that the police officer employ the least intrusive means of discovering and neutralizing any concealed weapons. While a pat-down of the outer surface of a suspect's clothing is typically the least intrusive method, a more intrusive frisk may be warranted in the appropriate circumstance."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“Applying these principles to the facts of the instant case, we conclude that when Officer White failed to detect a weapon-like object, his frisk of Smith should have ceased. Instead, Officer White stated that he decided to “double check” the pat-down. He testified, “I pulled [Smith’s] shirt back to make sure I didn’t miss anything. ” He further explained, “I pulled the shirt out just so I could see the waistband to make sure nothing was sticking out even though I patted him, like to double check____” The trial judge also found that upon completing the initial pat-down, “the officer did one more thing, which was to tug at the shirt----” In verifying the results of the pat-down by a more intrusive search, Officer White exceeded the lawful bounds of a Terry frisk.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.