State v. Sampson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The focus is on whether the person placed his or her trash, for collection, in an area at or near a public way or area, so that it was readily accessible to the public. If so, it matters not -whether that area is technically within or without the boundary of the curtilage. As the North Dakota court stated in State v. Herrick, supra, 567 N.W.2d at 340, “[w]e will not engage in measuring expectations of privacy with a ruler.” When dealing with trash set out for collection, making the perimeter of the curtilage decisive for Fourth Amendment purposes lacks any reasonable basis and would lead to wholly irrational results. Curtilage is a legal concept, not a surveying one. Most people probably have no idea what the word “curtilage” even means, much less where, on their property, it ends. Nor do they, as a practical matter, give a moment’s thought to whether the place where they set their trash for collection is within or without this unmarked boundary.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 139 Md. App. 582 - Powell v. State

2. “As the Court’s opinion states, “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.” The question, however, is what protection it affords to those people. Generally, as here, the answer to that question requires reference to a “place.” My understanding of the rule that has emerged from prior decisions is that there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as “reasonable.” Thus a man’s home is, for most purposes, a place where he expects privacy, but objects, activities, or statements that he exposes to the “plain view” of outsiders are not “protected” because no intention to keep them to himself has been exhibited. On the other hand, conversations in the open would not be protected against being overheard, for the expectation of privacy under the circumstances would be unreasonable.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 201 Md. App. 23 - McGurk v. State

3. “the law that has emerged since Greenwood is essentially the same as it was before that case was decided, although, as a general rule, it is based less on the property concept of abandonment than on the conclusion that, by depositing the trash in a place accessible to the pub-lie, for collection, the depositor has relinquished any reasonable expectation of privacy.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Litchfield v. State