2000 Pa. Super. 396 - Commonwealth v. Lambert’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 31 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 37 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The PCRA court's familiarity with the case does not put the court in a compromised position to assess the value of the PCRA evidence. If that were so, no judge could serve at a bench trial and again in PCRA proceedings in the same case. That result is simply not reasonable. Evidently, Pennsylvania law does not agree with Appellant's position either. See [ Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal, 553 Pa. 485 , 720 A.2d 79 (1998), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 810 , 120 S.Ct. 41 , 145 L.Ed.2d 38 (1999)]. Therefore, Appellant's issue warrants no relief.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. In the Interest of R.D. · In Re RD

2. “(a) General rule. — If an appeal or other matter is taken to or brought in a court or magisterial district of this Commonwealth which does not have jurisdiction of the appeal or other matter, the court or district justice shall not quash such appeal or dismiss the matter, but shall transfer the record thereof to the proper tribunal of this Commonwealth, where the appeal or other matter shall be treated as if originally filed in the transferee tribunal on the date when the appeal or other matter was first filed in a court or magisterial district of this Commonwealth. [[Image here]] (b) Federal Cases.— (1) Subsection (a) shall also apply to any matter transferred or remanded by any United States court for a district embracing any part of this Commonwealth. * * * * Where a matter is filed in any United States court for a district embracing any part of this Commonwealth and the matter is dismissed by the United States court for lack of jurisdiction, any litigant in the matter filed may transfer the matter to a court or magisterial district of this Commonwealth by complying with the transfer provisions set forth in paragraph (2). (2) ... [S]uch transfer may be effected by filing a certified transcript of the final judgment of the United States court and the related pleadings in a court or magisterial district of this Commonwealth. The pleadings shall have the same effect as under the practice in the United States court, but the transferee court or dis- triet justice may require th”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2003 Pa. Super. 434 - Kelly v. Hazleton General Hospital

3. “For purposes of our PCRA hearing, all this testimony comes under the heading of "after-discovered evidence." On the first issue, all of this evidence was available at trial. The essential facts, the autopsy photographs, the autopsy report and the essence of the dying declaration, were all well known in 1991 and 1992. Had Appellant chosen to do so, she could have called expert witnesses to testify as to what Drs. Baden, Smialek and Larson said at the PCRA hearing. Nothing about the essential facts as to the dying declaration has changed. The only after-discovered evidence is the expert analysis of those facts.... Expert opinion may well be a subsequent interpretation of the available evidence and might be "after-discovered" in the sense that no one inquired as to these opinions at the time of trial. But the essential facts, the evidence on which these opinions are based, are the same today as they were in 1991 and 1992.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2016 Pa. Super. 117 - Commonwealth v. Ward-Green