Commonwealth v. Helwig’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 federal appellate · 11 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““We must commend the patience of the trial judge in this case and agree wholeheartedly with his opinion where it states, ‘Although the courts are and should be concerned that the rights of a defendant charged with crime be fully protected, nevertheless society should also be protected against what we believe to have been in this case unjustifiable and malicious effort to thwart justice and orderly judicial procedure’, . . . Judge Woodside of this Court, in an address before the Pennsylvania Bar Association, aptly summed it up when he said, ‘Drawing the line between the accused and the officers of his government is a difficult and serious problem for appellate courts. If it is drawn too far in one direction, individual freedom will be lost through the abuse of governmental power. If it is drawn too far in the other direction, free government has insufficient protection against those who would destroy it, and its citizens have inadequate protection against the criminals’.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 190 Pa. Super. 133 - Commonwealth v. Kumitis