Commonwealth v. Martin’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
50 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 52 later decisions — most recently June 2023 · most notably Commonwealth v. Rogers (2004), Commonwealth v. Matos (1996)
50 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 · Johnson v. United States · Sibron v. State of New York Peters · Warden, Maryland Penitentiary v. Hayden · United States v. Place
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 52 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We are mindful that government has a compelling interest in eliminating the flow of illegal drugs into our society, and we do not seek to frustrate the effort to rid society of this scourge. But all things are not permissible even in the pursuit of a compelling state interest. The Constitution does not cease to exist merely because the government’s interest is compelling. A police state does not arise whenever crime gets out of hand.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Here, the police, while conducting a brief investigatory stop, directed a drug detection dog to sniff a satchel that was placed on the ground. The present search, like the one in Johnston , implicated privacy interests protected by our constitution in an inherently less intrusive manner than a traditional search. The sniff search only provided police with the limited information of whether contraband was present, and therefore was unlikely to intrude, except marginally, upon an innocent person’s rights. The additional inconvenience of a brief sniff search conducted during a valid investigatory stop was minimal. Further, the subject of the investigation was reasonably protected from police harassment, annoyance and humiliation since both the investigatory stop and the canine sniff were supported by reasonable suspicion. Thus, the limited intrusion in the present case was not qualitatively different from the sniff search permitted in Johnston.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“lawfully in place at the time of the search [and] have probable cause to believe that a canine search of a person will produce contraband or evidence of a crime”
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.