United States v. Frasher’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 federal appellate · 2 district · 2 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. “Some degree of “standardized criteria” or “established routine” must regulate these police actions, which may be conducted without the safeguards of a warrant or probable cause, to ensure that impoundments and inventory searches are not merely a ruse for general rummaging in order to discover incriminating evidence. The requirement that discretion be fettered, however, has never meant that a decision to impound must be made in a “totally mechanical” fashion.... It is not feasible for a police department to develop a policy that provides clear-cut guidance in every potential impoundment situation____ [Testimony can be sufficient to establish police [impoundment] procedures---- So long as the officer’s residual judgment is exercised based on legitimate concerns related to the purposes of an impoundment, his decision to impound a particular vehicle does not run afoul of the Constitution.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Arrocha

2. “Inventory searches are one of the well-defined exceptions to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Morris