United States v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
520 F.2d 74 · 1975
Citation profile
18 federal appellate · 1 district · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently November 2018 · most notably United States v. Staten (1978), United States v. Bonner (1989)
18 federal appellate · 1 district · 17 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 Ker v. State of California · Patterson v. United States · Miller v. United States · Thompson v. United States · Sabbath v. United States
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The phrase “refused admittance” is not restricted to an affirmative refusal. United States v. Chambers, 382 F.2d 910 (6th Cir. 1967); Masiello v. United States, 115 U.S.App.D.C. 57 , 317 F.2d 121 (1963). Rarely if ever is there an affirmative refusal. More often the officers meet with silence as the occupants seek to destroy evidence or escape. Accordingly, whether the failure to respond to an officer’s knock constitutes refused admittance is a question of the circumstances. See United States v. Augello, 368 F.2d 692 (3rd Cir. 1966); McClure v. United States, 332 F.2d 19 (9th Cir. 1964). Ortiz upheld the execution of a search warrant by narcotics agents at 6:45 A.M. on their testimony that, when there was no “immediate response” of any kind to their announcement, the door was forced.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“There has been some judicial leaning toward giving less weight to the need specified in section 3109 that admittance be refused before a forced entry than to the need for announcement of identity and purpose. We should be slow to accede to such a judicial interpretation of the statute when it is applied to the execution of a search warrant in the course of investigation of a nonviolent crime, as here [drug distribution], or where urgency is not required to protect anyone from personal danger_ “[T]he Anglo-American tradition of respect for the privacy of the home and the dignity of the citizen even when suspected of criminal behavior forecloses a grudging application of the statute.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“control of one was the source of control of the other”
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.