Commonwealth v. Dowds’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “This Court has not previously addressed whether a defendant's denial of ownership, standing alone, is sufficient to constitute abandonment.... Notably, a number of other jurisdictions have found abandonment based upon a disclaimer of ownership in response to police questioning. See generally Annotation, Search and Seizure: What Constitutes Abandonment of Personal Property Within Rule That Search and Seizure of Abandoned Property is not Unreasonable—Modern Cases, 40 A.L.R.4th 381 , §§ 21-25.5 (2000) (collecting cases); 1 LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE § 2.6(b), at 581-89 (same). Where, as here, an individual's disclaimer of ownership is not the product of improper police conduct and clearly indicates her intention, we can perceive no basis for treating it differently than an act from which an intention to abandon may be inferred. Cf. [Commonwealth v.] Shoatz, 469 Pa. [545,] 554, 366 A.2d [1216,] 1220 [(1976)] (concluding that act of dropping luggage and fleeing sufficiently indicated abandonment of privacy expectation).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Smith

2. “The issue is not abandonment in the strict property-right sense, but whether the person prejudiced by the search had voluntarily discarded, left behind, or otherwise relinquished his interest in the property in question so that he could no longer retain a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to it at the time of the search.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Kane

3. “Although in some circumstances the presence or absence of an admonition that the citizen-subject is free to depart will be a significant factor, ... the universal requirement of a prophylactic warning as advocated by Dowds would be inconsistent with the [totality of the circumstances] precept.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Smith