2003 Pa. Super. 68 - Commonwealth v. Rosendary’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Many of these claims are based on omissions, which by their very nature, do not appear on the record and thus, require further fact-finding, extra-record investigation and where necessary, an eviden-tiary hearing. Related to this rationale is the general belief that an appellate court should not consider issues that were not raised and developed in the court below.... The trial court is the court that had the opportunity to observe counsel’s performance firsthand and is therefore in the best position to make findings related to both the quality of trial counsel’s performance and the impact of any shortfalls in that representation. By requiring ineffectiveness claims to be raised on direct appeal when new counsel has entered the case, the trial court is eliminated from the process, leaving the appellate court in an awkward position as to the manner in which these claims can be assessed. Appellate courts rarely function as fact-finders and do not have the resources to do so.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2003 Pa. Super. 137 - Commonwealth v. Thornton