State v. Foster’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"`A police officer in the field frequently must make life-or-death decisions in a matter of seconds. There may be little or no time in which to weigh the magnitude of a potential safety risk against the intrusiveness of protective measures. An officer must be allowed considerable latitude to take safety precautions in such situations. Our inquiry therefore is limited to whether the precautions taken were reasonable under the circumstances as they reasonably appeared at the time that the decision was made.'"”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Madden · State Ex Rel. Juv. Dept. v. Mad

2. “" Article I, section 9 * * * does not forbid an officer to take reasonable steps to protect himself or others if, during the course of a lawful encounter with a citizen, the officer develops a reasonable suspicion, based upon specific and articulable facts, that the citizen might pose an immediate threat of serious physical injury to the officer or to others then present."”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Madden · State Ex Rel. Juv. Dept. v. Mad

3. “"the state is not required * * * to justify the choice of one reasonable precaution over another. Indeed, such a post hoc weighing of alternatives would be exactly the sort of uncharitable second-guessing that Bates itself condemned: It would require that an option that was chosen quickly * and under pressure be the same one that a reviewer later identifies at leisure and after reflection. Courts should not weigh the possible courses of action against each other; the officer safety doctrine requires only that the choice actually made be reasonable, even if other choices also would have been reasonable."”

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