Commonwealth v. Cortez’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
187 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 187 later decisions — most recently May 2019 · most notably Commonwealth v. Hall (1997), Commonwealth v. D'Amato (1987)
187 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 Terry v. Ohio · Commonwealth v. Hicks · Commonwealth v. Goodwin · Commonwealth v. Hamlin · Commonwealth v. Johnson
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 187 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When we review the ruling of a suppression court we must determine whether the factual findings are supported by the record. When it is a defendant who has appealed, we must consider only the evidence of the prosecution and so much of the evidence for the defense as, fairly read in the context of the record as a whole, remains uncontradicted. Assuming that there is support in the record, we are bound by the facts as are found and we may reverse the suppression court only if the legal conclusions drawn from those facts are in error.”
21 later decisions quote this exact passage“It is well settled that: “The Fourth Amendment does not require a policeman who lacks the precise level of information necessary for probable cause to arrest to simply shrug his shoulders and allow a crime to occur or a criminal to escape.” Indeed, it is quite clear that a police officer is justified in making a reasonable investigatory stop of a suspicious individual “in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo temporarily while obtaining more information ...” A police officer’s authority to “stop and frisk” a citizen is predicated upon his observance of “unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the person(s) with whom he is dealing may be armed and dangerous ...” Furthermore, in order to justify a “stop and frisk” the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which taken together with rational inferences from those facts reasonably warranted the intru sion. “Thus, it is also clear that an investigative stop of a moving vehicle to be valid must be based upon objective facts creating a reasonable suspicion that the detained motorist is presently involved in criminal activity.” [Citations omitted; emphasis added]”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[e]ven if probable cause to arrest is absent, the police officer may still legitimately seize a person ... and conduct a limited search of the individual’s outer clothing in an attempt to discover the presence of weapons which might be used to endanger the safety of the police officer and others, if the police officer observes unusual and suspicious conduct on the part or the individual seized which leads him to reasonably conclude that criminal activity may be afoot and that the person with whom he is dealing may be armed and dangerous.”
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.