United States v. Beale’s Empirical Analysis
736 F.2d 1289 · 1984
Citation profile
43 federal appellate · 4 district · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 69 later decisions — most recently June 2018 · most notably United States v. Dicesare (1985), United States v. Whitehead (1988)
43 federal appellate · 4 district · 17 state decisions — followed in 13 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 Terry v. Ohio · Katz v. United States · Johnson v. United States · United States v. Place · United States v. Chadwick
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 69 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Here, we are not confronted with a case in which the detection dog conducted a sniff of a person rather than an inanimate object, or a sniff of luggage that a person was carrying at the time. The investigative technique applied to Beale's luggage caused `virtually no annoyance and rarely even contact with the owner of the bags, unless [the test result] is positive.'”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[T]he canine sniff is sui generis. We are aware of no other investigative procedure that is so limited both in the manner in which the information is obtained and in the content of the information revealed by the procedure. Therefore, we conclude that the particular course of investigation that the agents intended to pursue here — exposure of respondent’s luggage, which was located in a public place, to a trained canine — did not constitute a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““When using dogs to ferret out contraband, the police are not simply walking around hoping to come across evidence of a crime. Instead they are investigating. They are trying to find something. They are seeking evidence in hidden places. If this activity does not qualify as a ‘search,’ then I am not sure what does.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.