2008 Pa. Super. 27 - Commonwealth v. Baker’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. “When the Commonwealth appeals from a suppression order, we ... consider only the evidence from the defendant’s witnesses together with the evidence of the prosecution that, when read in the context of the entire record, remains uncontradicted. The suppression court’s findings of fact bind an appellate court if the record supports those findings. The suppression court’s conclusions of law, however, are not binding on an appellate court, whose duty is to determine if the suppression court properly applied the law to the facts.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2013 Pa. Super. 105 - Commonwealth v. Whitlock · 2014 Pa. Super. 2 - Commonwealth v. Newman

2. “Generally speaking, the production of an informant is a discovery matter and subject to the following test set forth in Commonwealth v. Bonasorte: [ ] we hold that a defendant seeking production of a confidential informant at a suppression hearing must show that production is material to his defense, reasonable, and in the interest of justice. By this we mean that the defendant must demonstrate some good faith basis in fact to believe that a police officer-affiant willfully has included misstatements of facts in an affidavit of probable cause which misrepresents either the existence of the informant or the information conveyed by the informant; that without the informant’s information there would not have been probable cause; and that production of the informant is the only way in which the defendant can substantiate this claim.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2011 Pa. Super. 256 - Commonwealth v. Johnson