2010 Pa. Super. 233 - Commonwealth v. Wilson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““[u]nder Pennsylvania law, a challenge to the validity of a sentence is a challenge to its legality.” Commonwealth v. Arest, 734 A.2d 910 , 912 n. 2 (Pa.Super.1999). “If a court does not possess statutory authorization to impose a particular sentence, then the sentence is illegal and must be vacated.” Id. (citation omitted). See also [Commonwealth v.] Robinson, 931 A.2d [15], 21 [ (Pa.Super.2007) ] (an illegal sentencing claim is one which implicates “the fundamental legal authority of the court to impose the sentence it did.”); Commonwealth v. Pinko, 811 A.2d 576, 577 (Pa.Super.2002) (“The matter of whether the trial court possesses the authority to impose a particular sentence is a matter of legality.”).”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2013 Pa. Super. 77 - Commonwealth v. Hill · 2012 Pa. Super. 240 - Commonwealth v. Bowen

2. “The four years preceding the formation of the Philadelphia Gun Court were years of intense violence in Philadelphia: from 2000 to 2004, the city experienced more than 300 murders per year. See Murders on rise in Philadelphia, USA Today, December 12, 2005, available at http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-12-04-murders-philadelphia-x.htm. (last visited September 8, 2010). Philadelphia’s murder rate in 2004, of 22.4 per 100,000 residents, was “the highest of the nation’s 10 largest cities and rank[ed] third among the 25 largest, behind Baltimore and Detroit.” Id. Eighty percent of the murders in Philadelphia were shooting deaths, ten percent higher than the national average. See id.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2014 Pa. Super. 65 - Commonwealth v. Scarborough

3. “A plain reading of [Section 9912(d)(2) ] discloses that it pertains to searches made by probation officers acting on their own authority without judicial sanction. In this case, the trial court itself ordered the condition of random, warrantless searches expressly as a condition of probation. As noted above, the condition imposed by the trial court comports with the protections offered by the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions. In no way does [Section 9912(d)(2) ] limit the authority of the trial court to impose, when appropriate, a condition of probation that the probationer be subjected to random, warrantless searches.”

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