160 Pa. Super. 165 - Commonwealth v. Blose’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 40 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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The best approach to a rule we have found is the recent pronouncement by Mr. Justice Rutledge in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U. S. 750 [764-765], 66 S. Ct. 1239, 1248 . After analyzing the Act of Congress (28 U. S. C. A. §391), relating to harmless error, he said: 'If, when all is said and done, the conviction is sure that the error did not influence the jury, or had but very slight, effect, the verdict and the judgment should stand . . . But if one cannot say, with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened Avithout stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error, it is impossible to conclude that substantial rights were not affected. The inquiry cannot be merely whether there was enough to support the result, apart from the phase affected by tbe error. It is ratlier, even so, whether the error itself had substantial influence. If so, or if one is left in grave doubt, the conviction cannot stand.’ ””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Young · 161 Pa. Super. 548 - Commonwealth v. Roberts