2009 Pa. Super. 237 - Commonwealth v. Hartzell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

19 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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In Hartzell , a defendant placed two men in danger by discharging his firearm toward a creek near a bridge from approximately ninety (90) feet away, approximately twenty-five (25) to thirty (30) feet away from the men's location on the bridge. While the defendant did not aim his firearm directly at the two men, the Superior Court found that since the water was shallow and there were rocks in the stream, it was hardly inconceivable that a bullet fired into the nearby stream could have struck a rock or other object and deflected up and hit one of them. The Court found that the actual discharging of a firearm in the vicinity of others constituted a sufficient danger of death or serious bodily injury to satisfy the statute of [REAP]. As for the mens rea of a conscious disregard of a known risk, the defendant's purposeful shot into the water and awareness of the men on the bridge were more than enough to satisfy the needed mental state. Therefore, the Court held that the evidence was sufficient to find the defendant guilty of [REAP]. Here, [Shaw] discharged a firearm in close proximity to [C.B.], only fifteen (15) to twenty (20) feet away. While [Shaw] did not directly aim the firearm at [C.B.], he did discharge it above his head into the air, creating a risk of causing serious bodily injury under the same reasoning applied in Hartzell . The police recovered from [Shaw's] residence a substantial amount of ammunition for shotguns, handguns, and BB guns. It is of particular note tha”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Shaw