46 Wash. App. 587 - State v. Berlin’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently January 2000
15 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 Aguilar v. Texas · Spinelli v. United States · United States v. Harris · United States v. Bailey · 102 Wash. 2d 432 - State v. Jackson
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To establish the reliability of a citizen informant, and thus to fulfill the second prong of the Aguilar test, it is only necessary for the police to interview the informant and ascertain such background facts as would support a reasonable inference that he is "prudent" or credible, and without motive to falsify. In making this determination, the police may justifiably assume that the ordinary citizen who has seldom or never reported a crime to the police may, in fact, be more reliable than one who supplies information on a regular basis. In making this evaluation, an ascertainment of the citizen's identity will almost invariably be necessary. However, should the citizen wish to remain anonymous, as here, his reliability could certainly be corroborated by description of him, his purpose for being at the locus of the crime, and the reason for his desire to remain anonymous.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Affiant has checked and found that the concerned citizens involved had no criminal background, came forward voluntarily, gave the appearance of being an honest citizen, and gave to affiant his or her name, phone number, and address to affiant but wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Certainly, the better practice would be for the affidavits to recite how an informant is qualified to identify the observed plants as marijuana. Again, mindful of the deference given to magistrates who issue warrants and that doubts must be resolved in favor of the warrant's validity, it was not error to find that the basis of knowledge prong of Aguilar-Spinelli was satisfied.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.