Commonwealth v. Caputo’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 21 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “First, before he made any statement, [Caputo] received and acknowledged that he understood his Miranda rights. Second, when [Caputo] indicated a wish not to speak to the police, all questioning ceased. It was only after he overheard the police conversation that [Caputo] stated, unprovoked, that he had been kidnapped the previous night. We do not agree with [Caputo] that his statement should be suppressed because the police officer’s request to use his telephone was “reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response” from [Caputo], and therefore the “functional equivalent” of an interrogation. The telephone call was a report and request for further information, an action “normally attendant” to police procedures. [Caputo’s] statement occurred only after and apparently because he had overheard the telephone conversation that tended to implicate him, not because of any “interrogation.” ... [Caputo] gave his consent to the police to enter his home, he did not ask them to leave, and spoke to them only after he recognized that the police had seen potentially incriminating evidence outside. A defendant who is “nervous” because he is in the presence of police within hours of committing murder and who chooses to give false information to the police in an attempt, however clumsy, to throw them off the trail as he perceives their attention focusing on him as a suspect, cannot resort later to a claim of coercion. Because we reject [Caputo’s] claims that his statements to the police a”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Caputo v. Nelson

2. “defense counsel's decision to offer a brief explanation of the defendant's situation was not unreasonable”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Gilbert