Commonwealth v. Parrish’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 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 9 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[P]ossession can be found by proving actual possession, constructive possession, or joint constructive possession. Where a defendant is not in actual possession of the prohibited items, the Commonwealth must establish that the defendant had constructive possession to support the conviction. Constructive possession is a legal fiction, a pragmatic construct to deal with the realities of criminal law enforcement. We have defined constructive possession as conscious dominion, meaning that the defendant has the power to control the contraband and the intent to exercise that control. To aid application, we have held that constructive possession may be established by the totality of the circumstances. It is well established that, [a]s with any other element of a crime, constructive possession may be proven by circumstantial evidence. In other words, the Commonwealth must establish facts from which the trier of fact can reasonably infer that the defendant exercised dominion and control over the contraband at issue. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Davis , 743 A.2d 946 , 953-54 (Pa.Super. 1999) (holding that evidence was sufficient to prove constructive possession over drugs found in common areas of an apartment where the defendant entered the apartment using his own key, and possessed $ 800 in cash on his person, and police recovered [the] defendant's identification badge, size-appropriate clothing, and firearms from a bedroom). [A] defendant's mere presence at a place where contraband is ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Mikitiuk