United States v. Sledge’s Empirical Analysis
650 F.2d 1075 · 1981
Citation profile
38 federal appellate · 1 district · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 75 later decisions — most recently October 2025 · most notably United States v. Yarbrough (1988), State v. Grissom (1992)
38 federal appellate · 1 district · 16 state decisions — followed in 12 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 21 U.S.C. § 841 (§ 401 of the Controlled Substances Act)
Relies on Katz v. United States · Rakas v. Illinois · Jones v. United States · United States v. Matlock · United States v. Calandra
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 75 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] search is not invalidated where a police officer in good faith relies on what reasonably, if mistakenly appears to be a third-party's authority to consent to the search.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“will at times exceed the scope of authorized access,”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. LASTINE v. STATE · Lastine v. State“The officer in the case before us acted with care to determine the landlord's authority to admit him. He reviewed the landlord's recitation of the facts which indicated abandonment. The facts were consistent with his own observations and knowledge of the case. He was entitled to assume that the appellants' expectation of privacy had not survived the landlord's apparent right to enter the property and to consent to its search by law enforcement officers.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.