Davis v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
451 F.3d 759 · 2006
Citation profile
7 federal appellate · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 129 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably Skop v. City of Atlanta (2007), Reese v. Herbert (2008)
7 federal appellate · 2 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Harlow v. Fitzgerald · Graham v. Connor · Duncan v. Walker · SAUCIER v. KATZ Et Al.
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 129 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[Officer Becht] grabbed Davis from behind, twisted his arms behind his back and handcuffed him. Davis tried to tell Becht that he had an injured shoulder and was in pain. Becht’s response was to push his arm “hard way up,” causing greater pain. Davis was then handcuffed, and forced to the ground by Becht pushing on his bad shoulder. Becht dragged Davis to the police car, which was a canine unit, and forced him down on the ground again, while pulling hard on his shoulder. In the meantime, Bright pulled the police dog out of its cage in the back of the unit and Becht dragged, pushed or threw Davis very hard into the dog cage causing him to hit his head on the top of the car as he entered. Still handcuffed, Davis slid across the bottom of the cage, hit his head and shoulder on the opposite side of the cage and had to lie down on the metal floor of the cage. Davis was then driven in the cage, not to the police station, but to a nearby parking lot to wait for another vehicle to transport him to the police station.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Neither an owner's simple inquiry as to why officers are present on his property nor a person's attempt to bring a dangerous situation to the officer's attention can be construed as obstruction of justice or disorderly conduct. Nor can a citizen be precluded by the threat of arrest from asking to speak to an officer's superior or from asking for an officer's badge number. Those inquiries likewise do not constitute obstruction of justice or disorderly conduct.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Whoever commits such acts as are of a nature to corrupt the public morals, or outrage the sense of public decency, or affect the peace and quiet of persons who may witness them, or engages in brawling or fighting, or engages in such conduct as to constitute a breach of the peace or disorderly conduct, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.