2000 Pa. Super. 14 - Commonwealth v. Clark’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 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 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Defense counsel was aware at a pretrial discovery hearing that the officer’s surveillance location was one hundred feet north of [the intersection in question] and that he was approximately ten to twenty feet above street level.... It was also elicited that people were playing basketball on a court adjacent to a vacant lot on the northeast corner of [the street] and that these people were between [the officer’s] surveillance and the place where the buyer’s car was parked on [the street].... It is apparent from a review of this cross-examination that defense counsel had deduced the approximate location of the confidential surveillance site and was able to conduct an effective cross-examination with that information. Accordingly, we must agree with the Superior Court that [the defendant] has failed to meet his burden of explaining how a more detailed disclosure of the confidential surveillance location would have been necessary to his defense.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2008 Pa. Super. 13 - Commonwealth v. Nobles

2. “Our role is to determine whether the record supports the suppression court’s factual findings and the legitimacy of the inferences and legal conclusions drawn from those findings. In making this determination, we may consider only the evidence of the prosecution’s witnesses and so much of the defense as, fairly read in the context of the record as a whole, remains uncontradicted. When the factual findings of the suppression court are supported by the evidence, we may reverse only if there is an error in the legal conclusions drawn from those factual findings.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2000 Pa. Super. 114 - Commonwealth v. Devine

3. “Abandonment is primarily a question of intent, -and intent may be inferred from words spoken, acts done, and other objective facts. All relevant circumstances existing at the time of the alleged abandonment should be considered. The is sue is not abandonment in the strict property-right sense but whether the person prejudiced by the search had voluntarily discarded, left behind, or otherwise relinquished his interest in the property in question so that he could no longer retain a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to it at the time of the search.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2000 Pa. Super. 290 - Commonwealth v. Barnette