2000 Pa. Super. 308 - Commonwealth v. Snyder’s Empirical Analysis
2000
Citation profile
2 state decisions
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Marion · United States v. Lovasco · Commonwealth v. Sneed · Kemmerer v. Commonwealth, Department of Transportation, Bureau of Driver Licensing · Office of Disciplinary Counsel v. Frankel
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 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“At the hearing before Judge Mundy, the Commonwealth assumed the responsibility of going forward with the evidence, as well as, implicitly, the burden of proof that the reasons for the delay were both valid and proper. In order to do so, it called as witnesses the decision and policy-makers who were in authority, from the time of the fatal arson to the time of appellant’s arrest. The District Attorney of Luzerne County, at the time of the fatal fire, Robert J. Gillespie, Jr., established that the victims were appellant’s wife, Diane, and his 36 day-old son, Brian, and that Keith Snyder, appellant, was a suspect. Two aspects of the case which were problematic, were the burn time of the fire and the presence of the drug tuinal in Diane’s bloodstream. He opined that, while he felt there was sufficient evidence to arrest appellant, he was not satisfied that there was enough to achieve a conviction. Gillespie was in office from January 1982 to December 1985. In the fall of 1984, he was authorized to empanel what he described as the first investigating Grand Jury in his county’s history, to investigate several criminal matters, including the Snyder investigation. At the time of his departure from office, he felt that there was insufficient evidence to sustain a conviction. Bernard Podcasy succeeded Gillespie and served until January, 1988. He received a unanimous Grand Jury report in August of 1986 which recommended that, while there was unequivocal evidence of incendiary origin, th”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.