Commonwealth v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
2003
Citation profile
77 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 77 later decisions — most recently February 2023 · most notably Commonwealth v. DeJesus (2004), Commonwealth v. Thompson (2009)
77 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 Miranda v. State of Arizona Vignera · Terry v. Ohio · Schneckloth v. Bustamonte · Florida v. Bostick · California v. Beheler
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 77 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“This Court has noted that there are three basic categories of interactions between citizens and the police. The first category, a mere encounter or request for information, does not need to be supported by any level of suspicion, and does not carry any official compulsion to stop or respond. The second category, an investigative detention, derives from Terry v. Ohio[, 392 U.S. 1 , 88 S.Ct. 1868 , 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) ] and its progeny: such a detention is lawful if supported by reasonable suspicion because, although it subjects a suspect to a stop and a period of detention, it does not involve such coercive conditions as to constitute the functional equivalent of an arrest. The final category, the arrest or custodial detention, must be supported by probable cause.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage“While we recognize that Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution affords our citizens greater protections than the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, we do not believe that requiring apparent authority alone is inconsistent with our Constitution. Article I, Section 8 provides that people must be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Because the officers’ belief that they obtained consent from a third party who had common authority over a premises must be reasonable for the ‘apparent authority exception’ to apply, police officers should not be required to obtain a search warrant based upon probable cause where they have apparent authority to conduct a search. A person’s privacy rights are no more violated when a third party with actual authority to consent permits police officers to enter a residence than when a person at the house with apparent authority consents to the entry of the police officers into the premises.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“the mere approach of police followed by police questioning ... does not amount to a seizure”
2 later decisions 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.