Agurs v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 36 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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[T]he mere observation, documentation, or suspicion of a defendant’s participation in criminal activity will not necessarily suffice, by itself, to establish probable cause that inculpatory evidence will be found in the home. There must be something more that, directly or by reasonable inference, will allow a neutral magistrate to determine that the contraband may be found in the home.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 231 Md. App. 156 - Williams v. State · State v. Johnson

2. “1. Can an officer affiant’s generalized claim that suspects sometimes have evidence of crimes on their cell phones alone provide the requisite nexus between the crime alleged and the phone to be searched to support the issuance of a search warrant? 2. Did the trial court err in denying [Appellant's motion to suppress the fruits of a search conducted pursuant to a warrant issued for his cell phone where there was no substantial basis to find probable cause because the warrant application lacked any nexus between the alleged criminal activity and the cell phone to be searched beyond the officer affiant’s generalized statement that, in his experience, “suspects in robberies and assaults will sometimes take pictures, videos and send messages about their criminal activities on their cellular phones”? 3. Does the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule apply where a search warrant for a cell phone is issued on the basis of the affiant officer’s statement that, in his experience, suspects in robberies and assaults “sometimes” have pictures, videos, or messages about the crimes in their cell phones, and the warrant application fails to allege any nexus between the crimes and the phone, any potential communication with conspirators, or the commission of a crime that requires communications with third parties?”

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

3. “Mills and Ward approached the nexus issue in terms of pure deductive reasoning: a particular kind of weapon was used in the crime; there was evidence linking the defendant to the crime; the weapon was of a kind likely to be kept, and not disposed of, by the defendant; when arrested shortly after the crime, the defendant was not in direct possession of the weapon; ergo, it was likely to be found in a place accessible to him—his home or car. That same kind of deductive approach, based on reasonable factual assumptions, has been used by a number of courts in finding a nexus between observed or documented drug transactions and the likelihood that drugs or other evidence of drug law violations may be found in the defendant’s car or home. The reasoning, supported by both experience and logic, is that, if a person is dealing in drugs, he or she is likely to have a stash of the product, along with records and other evidence incidental to the business, that those items have to be kept somewhere, that if not found on the person of the defendant, they are likely to be found in a place that is readily accessible to the defendant but not accessible to others, and that the defendant’s home is such a place.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 231 Md. App. 156 - Williams v. State