2015 Pa. Super. 187 - Commonwealth v. Batts’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 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 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[A]t a minimum [the trial court] should consider a juvenile’s age at the time of the offense, his diminished culpability and capacity for change, the circumstances of the crime, the extent of his participation in the crime, his family, home and neighborhood environment, his emotional maturity and development, the extent that familial and/or peer pressure may have affected him, his past exposure to violence, his drug and alcohol history, his ability to deal with the police, his capacity to assist his attorney, his mental health history, and his potential for rehabilitation. [Commonwealth v.] Knox, 50 A.3d [732,] 745 [ (Pa.Super. 2012) ] (citing Miller, 132 S.Ct. at 2455 ) [ (remanding for resentencing a juvenile who had previously received a mandatory life without parole sentence in violation of Miller , and instructing trial court to resentence juvenile to either life with parole or life without parole), appeal denied, 620 Pa. 721 , 69 A.3d 601 (2013)]. We agree -with the Commonwealth that the imposition of a minimum sentence taking such factors into account is the most appropriate remedy for the federal constitutional violation that occurred when a life-without-parole sentence was mandatorily applied to Appellant. Batts II, supra at 297 (first brackets in original).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2017 Pa. Super. 138 - Commonwealth v. Shabazz-Davis

2. “Justice Baer . authored a concurring opinion, joining in the majority’s decision to “remand the case to the trial court for it to resentence Appellant based upon his. individual circumstances to a sentence of life imprisonment either with the possibility of parole or without the possibility of parole for his conviction of first-degree murder committed when he was a fourteen year old juvenile.” [Batts II] at 299-300 (Baer, J., concurring). Justice Baer further opined that, to achieve uniformity in sentencing, trial courts should be guided by Section 1102.1 in resentencing juveniles whose life without parole sentences violated Miller , but would not otherwise be re-sentenced under Section 1102.1 because they were convicted before Miller was decided. Id. at 300 (Baer, J., concurring).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2016 Pa. Super. 257 - Commonwealth v. Hicks

3. “[0]ver the time that you were awaiting trial, you heard from one or more attor neys that our Supreme Court decided in Batts that, in essence, children are different from adults for purposes of sentence and it requires the Court to conduct what’s commonly referred to as individualized consideration of mitigating circumstances, particularly the defendant’s youth, before a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole can be imposed. That is because children lack those qualities that inure to an adult and it is their underdeveloped sense of responsibility that makes them susceptible to influences and they generally have a less fixed character than adults. So for that reason, I ordered the various reports and set the matter down for sentencing today. .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2017 Pa. Super. 138 - Commonwealth v. Shabazz-Davis