United States v. Griffith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

27 federal appellate · 1 district · 12 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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"Once a suspect is under the control of arresting officers, the area of permissible search under Chimel is narrowed accordingly. [T]he reason underlying the limited right of search allowed in Chimel is the danger that the defendant will seize a weapon or destructible evidence, and whether that danger exists depends upon the circumstances of each case. Regardless of . . . earlier apprehensions. . . the officers obviously did not believe defendant was likely to resist, escape, or destroy evidence after he had been placed under arrest. They did not handcuff him, and they allowed him to walk about the room . . . . If the freedom thus permitted defendant created [a] danger . . . the danger was of the officers' own making. Just as " Chimel does not permit the arresting officers to lead the accused from place to place and use his presence in each location to justify a `search incident to the arrest,'" see United States v. Mason, 173 U.S.App.D.C. 173, 177 , 523 F.2d 1122, 1126 (1975), it does not permit the officers to achieve the same result by ordering the accused to . . . move about the room . . . . The officers' only legitimate purpose in being in the room was to make an arrest. They did not have the right to create a situation which gave them a pretext for searching beyond the area of defendant's immediate control. They could . . . have posted a guard on the room, obtained a search warrant, and later returned to search the room pursuant to the warrant. Cf. United States v. Jeffe”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Collins v. Commonwealth · 167 N.J. Super. 233 - State v. Welsh

2. “No less than three different views are to be found in the cases. One is that the motel or hotel arrest is to be treated exactly like the at-home arrest, so that the officers have “no greater right to remove or search defendant’s personal belongings that were not on his person or within his immediate control than they would have if they had made the arrest in his house.” At the other extreme, it has been held that removal of the defendant’s effects from his motel room is proper, at least when the defendant does not “offer any objection or suggest any other arrangement for the safekeeping of [his] possessions,” because the hotel or motel management cannot be expected “to permit those belongings to remain indefinitely in the vacated room.” The middle ground is that since the law does not “place any responsibility on the [police] for the care of defendant’s property located in the motel room” and adequately protects the innkeeper “by statutory provisions limiting the liability of an innkeeper for loss of guests’ property,” it is only the defendant’s interests which are at stake, meaning the police are obligated to give him “the choice of leaving his belongings in the motel room or requesting the [police] to take them into custody for him.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 652 F. Supp. 1353 - United States v. Pryor

3. “a search of the arrestee's person and the area `within his immediate control,'”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 167 N.J. Super. 233 - State v. Welsh