United States v. Coplen’s Empirical Analysis
541 F.2d 211 · 1976
Citation profile
30 federal appellate · 3 district · 8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 49 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2002 · most notably Texas v. Brown (1983), United States v. Whitten (1983)
30 federal appellate · 3 district · 8 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 Glasser v. United States · Katz v. United States · Coolidge v. New Hampshire · Sedillo v. United States · United States v. Santana
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 49 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Our first inquiry is whether Agent Young’s conduct in looking into the airplane constituted a search. The law is clear that it was not. It is well settled that visual observation by a law enforcement officer situated in a place where he has a right to be is not a search within the meaning of the fourth amendment. See United States v. Conner, 478 F.2d 1320 , 1323 (7th Cir. 1973); United States v. Hanahan, 442 F.2d 649 , 653 (7th Cir. 1971); United States v. Freeman, 426 F.2d 1351 , 1353 (9th Cir. 1970); Ponce, v. Craven, 409 F.2d 621 , 625 (9th Cir. 1969). This Court, however, must also determine whether the looking into the aircraft violated appellants’ reasonable expectation of privacy. If an individual knowingly exposes his conduct to public view, his reliance upon privacy is unreasonable and unjustified.. .. “Similarly here, we decline to conclude that the agent’s conduct in looking into the airplane constituted a search within the meaning of the fourth amendment. In this case, the agent was lawfully within the area where Coplen’s aircraft was parked. He proceeded to the aircraft and looked into the back window which” was open to the public view. The fact that the officer was forced to use a flashlight is immaterial. Being dark outside, it was necessary to employ such a device. Rather, if privacy were desired here, Copien should have closed off the window from public view. By failing to do so, thus permitting the agent by mere observation to view the marijuana debris, the”
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.