Owens v. Kelley’s Empirical Analysis
681 F.2d 1362 · 1982
Citation profile
23 federal appellate · 2 district · 37 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 80 later decisions — most recently June 2025 · most notably 19 Cal. 4th 743 - People v. Reyes (1998), 8 Cal. 4th 68 - People v. Tyrell J. (1994)
23 federal appellate · 2 district · 37 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
Relies on Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York · Morrissey v. Brewer · Aguilar v. Texas · Gagnon v. Scarpelli · Hoffman v. United States
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 80 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““... Searches of the residence and person of probationers ... are not conducted only when there is suspicion of a crime.... the primary purpose of such searches is to deter the commission of crime and to provide supervisors with information on the progress of their rehabilitative efforts. It is clear that a requirement that searches only be conducted when officers have “reasonable suspicion” or probable cause that a crime has been committed or that a condition of probation has been violated could completely undermine the purpose of the search condition. “Any search conducted pursuant to the search condition of probation must, of course, be carried out in a reasonable manner and only in furtherance of the purposes of probation. The terms of the condition do not authorize any “intimidating and harassing search to serve law enforcement ends totally unrelated” to either Owens’ conviction or rehabilitation. United States v. Consuelo-Gonzalez, 521 F.2d at 265. We thus find that on its face the condition of probation is constitutional and is capable of being lawfully applied. See United States v. Gordon, 540 F.2d 452 (9th Cir.1976).””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Motley v. Parks · State v. Perbix“While we intimate no position on the ultimate resolution of this issue it is clear that a condition of probation which requires the probationer to adopt religion or to adopt any particular religion would be unconstitutional.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In searching for the proper teaching of an [Emotional Maturity Instruction] course it is probably difficult to locate one who can teach morality without reference to religion, but that is the task which must be accomplished. We recognize that there is a fine line between rehabilitation efforts which encourage lawful conduct by an appeal to morality and the benefits of moral conduct to the life of the probationer, and efforts which encourage lawfulness through adherence to religious belief.”
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.