2001 Pa. Super. 168 - Commonwealth v. McCandless’s Empirical Analysis
2001
Citation profile
3 state decisions
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2254 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Brady v. State of Maryland · United States v. Bagley · Giglio v. United States · Napue v. People of the State of Illinois · Lehman Ex Rel. Lehman v. Lycoming County Children's Services Agency
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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[Appellee] was found guilty of first-degree murder in 1982. The evidence against him included the preliminary hearing testimony of John Barth, whom the trial court deemed unavailable at time of trial. On direct appeal from his judgment of sentence, [Appellee] claimed that the trial court erred in admitting Barth’s preliminary hearing testimony. The basis for the claim was twofold. First, [Appellee] claimed that the Commonwealth did not establish, as was required, that Barth was unavailable (claim # 1). Second, [Appellee] claimed that even if unavailability was established, he was not given an adequate opportunity to cross-examine Barth at the preliminary hearing, thus precluding admission of the testimony (claim #2). Both errors, alleged [Ap-pellee], constituted a violation of his rights under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, specifically, the Confrontation Clause. [Appellee] relied on the well-established rule that in order for an absent witness’ preliminary hearing testimony to be admissible at trial, 1) the witness must be unavailable despite the Commonwealth’s good faith effort to procure him for trial and 2) the defendant must have had a full and fair opportunity to cross-examine the witness at the preliminary hearing. This [C]ourt rejected [Appellee’s] claim[s] and adopted the trial court’s assessment of the issue. In its opinion, the trial court found that the Commonwealth made a good faith effort to make Barth available for trial and, further, th”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.