6 Mass. App. Ct. 310 - Commonwealth v. Storella’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

18 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[W]e will assume for purposes of this appeal that the defendant subjectively expected protection from police scrutiny while in the hospital emergency room. Nevertheless, we do not believe that an expectation of privacy in a hospital emergency room is objectively reasonable. The defendant correctly argues that an emergency room is not open to the general public in the sense that anyone may wander through at will. However, access to any emergency room by persons other than those seeking treatment is controlled by medical personnel for the purpose of enhancing their ability to treat patients.... We conclude that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the hospital emergency room. . . . This holding is not, as the defendant would suggest, an open invitation for the police to rifle the belongings of emergency room patients. Had this contraband been in a closed container, screened from public scrutiny, the defendant might successfully argue that an unreasonable search and seizure had occurred.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 222 Wis. 2d 179 - State v. Thompson

2. “One of the factual conclusions on which the judge predicated his denial of the motion to suppress was that the doctor who removed the bullet and turned it over to the police was not acting as an agent of the police but merely as a private citizen cooperating with the police by turning evidence of crime over to them. It has long been settled that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution applies only to searches and seizures taken by or at the direction of the State; and, consequently, evidence obtained illegally by private parties and turned over to the police is not obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 475 , 41 S.Ct. 574 , 65 L.Ed. 1048 (1921). The judge’s finding concerning lack of agency is therefore dispositive of the case, assuming that it was warranted by the evidence and involved no misapplication of constitutional principles.”

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