State v. Robinette’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
14 federal appellate · 84 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 102 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2021 · most notably Ohio v. Robinette (1996), State v. Robinette (1997)
14 federal appellate · 84 state decisions — followed in 15 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 Terry v. Ohio · Schneckloth v. Bustamonte · Florida v. Royer · United States v. Mendenhall · Florida v. Bostick
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 102 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... convinced that the right, guaranteed by the federal and Ohio Constitutions, to be secure in one’s person and property requires that citizens stopped for traffic offenses be clearly informed by the detaining officer when they are free to go after a valid detention, before an officer attempts to engage in a consensual interrogation. ... ... [W]e do not believe that this legality [of consensual encounters between police and citizens] should be used by police officers to turn a routine traffic stop into a fishing expedition for unrelated criminal activity....”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage““The transition between detention and a consensual exchange can be so seamless that the untrained eye may not notice that it has occurred. The undetectability of that transition may be used by police officers to coerce citizens into answering questions that they need not answer, or to allow a search of a vehicle that they are not legally obligated to allow.... Most people believe that they are validly in a police officer’s custody as long as the officer continues to interrogate them. The police officer retains the upper hand and the accouterments of authority. That the officer lacks legal license to continue to detain them is unknown to most-citizens, and a reasonable person would not feel free to walk away as the officer continues to address him.... [C]itizens stopped for traffic offenses [must] be clearly informed by the detaining officer when they are free to go after a valid detention, before an officer attempts to engage in a consensual interrogation. Any attempt at consensual interrogation must be preceded by the phrase ‘At this time you'legally are free to go’ or by words of similar import.” Id. 653 N.E.2d at 698-99 .”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage“"When the motivation behind a police officer's continued detention of a person stopped for a traffic violation is not related to the purpose of the original, constitutional stop, and when that continued detention is not based on any articulable facts giving rise to a suspicion of some separate illegal activity justifying an extension of the detention, the continued detention constitutes an illegal seizure.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.