United States v. Fleming’s Empirical Analysis
677 F.2d 602 · 1982
Citation profile
45 federal appellate · 3 district · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 103 later decisions — most recently January 2016 · most notably United States v. Turner (1991), United States v. Roman (1984)
45 federal appellate · 3 district · 29 state decisions — followed in 18 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) · 21 U.S.C. § 846 (§ 406 of the Controlled Substances Act) · 21 U.S.C. § 881 (§ 511 of the Controlled Substances Act)
Relies on Terry v. Ohio · Glasser v. United States · Chimel v. California · Payton v. New York · Sibron v. State of New York Peters
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 103 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] reviewing court, charged with the task of evaluating a Chimel search, must first put itself in the position of the law enforcement officers who initiated it.... Only after we have engaged in the same ex ante calculations that the police themselves faced should we consider whether subsequent events made a Chimel search unreasonable. At this second level of inquiry it does not make sense to prescribe a constitutional test that is entirely at odds with safe and sensible police procedures. Thus handcuffing [one defendant] and having reinforcements enter [the] house should not be determinative, unless we intend to use the Fourth Amendment to impose on police a requirement that the search be absolutely contemporaneous with the arrest, no matter what the peril to themselves or to bystanders. It is surely possible for a Chimel search to be undertaken too long after the arrest and too far from the arrestee's person. That is the lesson of Chadwick , But we do not consider that the presence of more officers than suspects invalidated the immediate search of [the second defendant's] bag. Nor do we think that a five-minute delay between seizing [the first defendant's] bag and opening it, occasioned by [the officer's] handcuffing [that defendant] and moving him to the street, defeased [the officer's] right to search under Chimel principles.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“it does not make sense to prescribe a constitutional test that is entirely at odds with safe and sensible police procedures,”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“because the danger addressed by a Chimel search had dissipated, so had any justification for opening the bags without a search warrant.”
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.