Commonwealth v. Jones

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• concluding that the plain view exception was met when “officers did nothing more than illuminate activity, two individuals standing on the porch of a suspected drug house, which they could already readily observe from a lawful and non-intrusive vantage point”
• holding use of police vehicle’s spotlight to illuminate porch of suspected drug house at night did not infringe on reasonable expectations of privacy
• shining spotlight at night onto front porch of residence ten feet away did not violate Fourth Amendment; spotlight was shined from lawful vantage point on public street, and illuminated area would have been in plain view in daytime

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Cited by

4 cases in this archive cite this case.

• Commonwealth v. Byrd
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 2009-12-30· cited 47×
• Com. v. Smith, M.
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 2022-11-04· cited 41×
• Com. v. Herlth, J.
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 2025-03-24· cited 1×
• Com. v. Herlth, J.
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 2026-06-05

Cites

15 cases in this archive are cited by this case.

• California v. Hodari D.
  Supreme Court· 1991-04-23· cited 3,670×
• Texas v. Brown
  Supreme Court· 1983-04-19· cited 3,147×
• Smith v. Maryland
  Supreme Court· 1979-06-20· cited 2,305×
• Kyllo v. United States
  Supreme Court· 2001-06-11· cited 1,834×
• United States v. Karo
  Supreme Court· 1984-09-18· cited 895×
• Commonwealth v. Matos
  Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 1996-02-26· cited 208×
• Commonwealth v. Smith
  Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 2003-11-19· cited 111×
• Commonwealth v. Milyak
  Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 1985-06-04· cited 87×
• Commonwealth v. Lemanski
  Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 1987-07-20· cited 76×
• United States v. Christopher Paul Cusumano, United States of America v. Robert William Porco
  Tenth Circuit· 1995-12-05· cited 31×
• Commonwealth v. Gindlesperger
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 1997-12-24· cited 29×
• Commonwealth v. Gindlesperger
  Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 1999-12-22· cited 23×
• Commonwealth v. Oglialoro
  Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 1988-09-01· cited 17×
• In the Interest of Evans
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 1998-07-31· cited 13×
• Commonwealth v. Hayes
  Superior Court of Pennsylvania· 2006-05-01· cited 11×