United States v. Kirkpatrick’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 district · 4 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Even a cursory comparison of the facts of this case and the facts of Beck show that the facts of this case are even weaker than the facts found insufficient in Beck . The “source” and “destination” facts are too inclusive to raise an objective suspicion; that is, many perfectly law-abiding citizens drive from the Southwest to Minneapolis. The fact that the defendant was driving a rental car is also perfectly consistent with law-abiding activity. In fact, the name match between the driver’s license and the rental car agreement and the match between the rental agreement (the place of rental and return) and the defendant’s story dispels, rather than creates, suspicion. Still further, and contrary to the officer’s suggestion, there was nothing odd about the defendant’s explanation of his trip. Uncles very frequently help their nieces just like (as in Beck) some truck drivers from California rent cars to look for work in North Carolina. Also, the duration of the trip — four days— in relationship to the reason for the trip was not suspicious. Finally, the act of touching one’s nose, and the like, hardly suggests criminal behavior.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Anderson