Commonwealth v. Clark’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

24 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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “an informant's tip may constitute probable cause where police independently corroborate the tip, or where the informant has provided accurate information of criminal activity in the past, or where the informant himself participated in the criminal activity.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Koonce · Commonwealth v. Wallace

2. “[b]oth lower courts failed to look at the information as a whole, but examined and considered individual factors in a mechanical fashion, effectively nullifying the mandate to assess the totality of the circumstances.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Wallace · Commonwealth v. Manuel

3. “in its entirety, giving significance to each piece of information and balancing the relative weights of all the various indicia of reliability (and unreliability) attending the tip.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Harlan · Commonwealth v. Manuel