State v. Eppler’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. “There is authority for the proposition that if the police have no other basis to conduct a search than the defendant’s consent, then the police must abide by any limitation by the defendant on the scope of that consent. [Citation to earlier edition of LaFave’s treatise]. In this case, however, the officer had probable cause to believe that defendant was guilty of shoplifting and therefore he could have arrested her and taken pictures of her immediately. Stated differently, the officer did not need defendant’s consent. Thus, his failure to abide by the terms of the agreement should not render the identification evidence inadmissible. Further, as a matter of Fourth Amendment law, even if the police illegally arrest a person, take that person’s picture, and then show the picture to an eyewitness, the eyewitness’ identification need not be excluded pursuant to the federal exclusionary rule if a photograph of the person inevitably would have been obtained through lawful means and shown to the eyewitness. Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431 [ 104 S.Ct. 2501 , 81 L.Ed.2d 377 ] (1984); State v. Seefeldt, 292 N.W.2d 558, 560 (Minn.1980). In this case, even assuming hypothetically that the police could not properly arrest defendant and obtain her picture that way, it appears inevitable that the police would have obtained a picture of her through independent means, would have shown that picture to the eyewitnesses, and would have obtained the eyewitness identification evidence. State v. Seefe”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In Re the Welfare of J.W.K.