United States v. Sanchez’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 11 district · 6 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 28 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Apparent authority arises from the reasonable, albeit erroneous, belief that the third party has the authority to provide valid consent. This inquiry is an objective one, based on the 'facts available to the officer at the moment.’ ”). Law-enforcement officers are allowed to rely on the parent’s status as a parent when there are no facts that would tend to undermine the parent’s authority to consent to a search of the adult child's room. The result should be the same when the facts undermining the parent’s actual authority exist, but the officer is unaware of them. An agents' actions are no less objectively reasonable because facts exist about which the agent does not know. The Court believes this distinction — whether there exist no facts undermining the parent’s authority or that such facts exist, but are not known to the officer— is essentially the difference between a parent's actual authority and the parent’s apparent authority. See W. LaFave, Search & Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 8.4 (4th ed. 2004)(suggesting that, "if the searching officers were ... unaware” that the child had exclusive use of his room, "the apparent authority doctrine could be employed to justify the search on the ground that the police reasonably believed the parents had the authority over their own home which they claimed to have.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 743 F. Supp. 2d 1281 - United States v. Romero

2. “The common understanding of an adult co-occupant’s authority stands in stark contrast to that of a child. Although we would expect a roommate to be free to invite whatever guests she chooses into the shared home, we cannot apply that presumption for most minor children. That is, one normally assumes that a minor child is not allowed to invite guests into the home absent a parent’s approval.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. United States v. Ronnie Belt

3. “It does not startle us that a parent’s consent to a search of the living room in the absence of his minor child is given effect; but we should not allow the police to rely on the consent of the child to bind the parent. The common sense of the matter is that the ... parent has not surrendered his privacy of place in the living room to the discretion of the ... child.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. United States v. Ronnie Belt