2002 Pa. Super. 1 - Commonwealth v. Hodges’s Empirical Analysis
2002
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently October 2023
15 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Thompson v. Oklahoma · Commonwealth v. Allen · Commonwealth v. Kulp · Commonwealth v. Persinger · Commonwealth v. Carter
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 15 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he plea was based on a maximum sentence that the court had no authority to impose. The entire process of plea negotiations, therefore, was affected by this grave error. [The defendant] pled guilty in order to avoid a maximum sentence which, by law, could not be imposed. We hold that in the event the maximum sentence communicated to a criminal defendant is in fact an illegal sentence, the plea process has been tainted from the outset and manifest injustice is established. The trial court stated that [the defendant] received the benefit of his bargain; it is clear, however, that [the defendant] did not strike a legitimate bargain. While it is true that [he] was aware that he could be sentenced to life, and that sentence was subsequently imposed, it cannot be said that [the defendant] entered into this agreement knowingly or voluntarily.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“The thrust of [the defendant’s] argument revolved around a mistake pertaining to [the defendant’s] age. Although trial counsel and the Commonwealth believed that [the defendant] was born on May 7, 1980, [the .defendant] was actually bom on May 7, 1982, making him fifteen years old at the time of the crime. Because he was not yet sixteen years of age at the time of the crime, he could not be subjected to the death penalty. Thompson v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 815 , 108 S.Ct. 2687 , 101 L.Ed.2d 702 (1988). [The defendant] correctly asserted that because of his age, the death penalty was never applicable. Therefore, because he entered into his plea agreement in order to avoid the death penalty, [the defendant] requested leave to withdraw that plea.”
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.