Bell v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Consistent with the Federal Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, a police officer may seize nonthreatening contraband detected during a protective pat-down search of a person whom the officer has briefly stopped based on the officer’s reasonable conclusion that criminal activity may be afoot with respect to such person, where the officer is justified in believing that the person is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others nearby, so long as the officer’s search is strictly limited to that which is necessary for the discovery of weapons which might be used to harm the officer or others, because (1) the “plain-view” doctrine - under which police officers may seize an object without a warrant if the officers are lawfully in a position from which they view the object, its incriminating character is immediately apparent, and the officers have a lawful right of access to the object - has an obvious application by analogy to cases in which an officer discovers contraband through the sense of touch during an otherwise lawful search; (2) if a police officer lawfully pats down a suspect’s outer clothing and feels an object whose contour or mass makes its identity immediately apparent, there has been no invasion of the suspect’s privacy beyond that already authorized by the officer’s search for weapons, and the warrantless seizure of the object if it is contraband is justified by the realization that resort to a neutral magistrate under such circumstances would often be imp”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hunter v. State

2. “In Dickerson, the Court suppressed evidence of the respondent’s possession of crack cocaine because it was shown that the arresting officer had to manipulate the object in the pocket of the respondent before determining that it was contraband. This manipulation amounted to an illegal search as the identity of the contraband was not apparent. The present case is analogous to Dickerson. [Officer] Raab was justified in frisking the appellant for weapons. When his initial frisk yielded no weapons, the search should have ended. The holding in Dickerson does not permit an officer to search a suspect for contraband under the guise of a weapons search. Because it is clear from the facts that Officer Rabb had to manipulate the bulge in Bell’s rear pocket to determine that it was contraband, this type of search is contrary to the permissible scope outlined in Dickerson.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hunter v. State