United States v. Watson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 4 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “First and most significantly, Navarette's rationale for deeming 911 calls reliable has much less force here. The Supreme Court concluded that 911 calls are more dependable because their features "provide some safeguards against making false reports with immunity." Specifically, the calls are recorded, so a victim of a false report may be able to identify the anonymous caller's voice later, and the calls can be traced back to a particular phone number and geographic location. But here, the caller borrowed a stranger's phone, limiting the usefulness of the system's tracing ability. Any phone number identified would not lead back to the caller because he had no permanent connection to the phone, and the phone's geographic location at the time of the call would be useful only so long as the caller remained near the phone. Under these circumstances, it is not obvious that the young caller would be worried about getting caught providing false information and therefore "think twice" before doing it.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Tre Ron Smith v. State of Indiana

2. “[p]eople who live in rough neighborhoods may want and, in many situations, may carry guns for protection. They should not be subject to more intrusive police practices than are those from wealthy neighborhoods.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Richmond

3. “make their own observations about the developing situation, which could transform an innocuous tip into reasonable suspicion”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. State v. Davis