State v. Alamont’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “We have no hesitation whatever in holding that [the officer] acted reasonably and prudently in conducting the pat search of [the defendant] in the circumstances. Here, a neutral and detached magistrate had judicially approved a warranted search for evidence of drug trafficking at the private residence where appellant was found. The officers whose duty required them to execute the warranted search were thus well aware they were engaged in an undertaking fraught with the potential for sudden violence. They were necessarily cognizant of the very real threat that the occupants of the residence were within an environment where weapons are readily accessible and often hidden, nor could they discount the possibility that one or more of the individuals found inside were personally armed. .. . That [the defendant’s] posture, at that moment, was non-threatening does not in any measure diminish the potential for sudden armed violence that his presence within the residence suggested. To require an officer to await an overt act of hostility, as [the defendant] suggests, before attempting to neutralize the threat of physical harm which accompanies an occupant’s presence in a probable drug trafficking residential locale, would be utter folly.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 7 Neb. Ct. App. 539 - In Re Interest of Andre W.

2. “they were going to conduct a 'cursory search for weapons,'”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Guy