Torres v. Goddard’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 2 district ·

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

1. “The warrant program was carried out by the Arizona Financial Crimes Task Force. The Task Force consisted of personnel from several public agencies including the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Cameron Holmes ... worked with the Task Force. Holmes sought court approval for and obtained seizure warrants pursuant to Arizona’s civil forfeiture statutes. See [A.R.S.]§ 13-4305(A)(1). While some of the earlier warrants sought seizure of wire transfers involving specific names listed in the warrants, later warrants, or “sweeps,” authorized seizure of all wire transfers that met certain specified criteria. The six “criteria-based” warrants identified in plaintiffs’ complaint authorized the seizure of every person-to-person Western Union wire transfer that (1) was sent from certain states to Arizona or, under one warrant, from certain states to Sonora, Mexico; (2) met or exceeded a threshold amount ranging from $500 to $2000; and (3) was made during a certain time period — typically three or four weeks in the spring or fall. Accompanying the warrant applications were factual affidavits sworn to by Task Force detectives. The affidavits claimed that any wire transfer that met the warrants’ criteria had a very high likelihood, for some warrants as high as 97 percent, of being “directly involved in illegal drug and/or human smuggling.” The seizures followed the same basic pattern. Holmes supervised the preparation of the seizure warrants and warrant applications. Holmes also reviewed th”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Torres v. Goddard

2. “[Plaintiffs’] section 1983 complaint alleges that defendants, “both personally and through agents or representatives,” “served and executed” the criteria-based warrants and “have illegally seized more than $9 million in interstate and international money transfers.” Plaintiffs allege that the seizures were unconstitutional because they were conducted without “particularized probable cause” to believe that their wire transfers “were involved in, ” or “were the fruits or in-strumentalities of, any of the stated criminal offenses" in the warrants,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Torres v. Goddard