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237 Pa. Super. 543

Commonwealth v. Hill

Superior Court of Pennsylvania

Decided December 1, 1975

Superior Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1975-12-01

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““we do not suggest that every situation where co-defendants are sentenced will require proportionment of sentences according to past criminal records; but here the difference in past records is significant. Each case raising the issue of excessive sentence must be reviewed on the circumstances of that case alone, recognizing that the trial judge has broad discretion in imposing sentence, and that if the sentence imposed is within statutory limits, there is no abuse of discretion unless the sentence is manifestly excessive so as to inflict too sever a punishment.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including 290 Pa. Super. 7 - Commonwealth v. Boardman

Relies on Commonwealth v. Riggins

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1975-12-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently July 2012 · most notably 344 Pa. Super. 108 - Commonwealth v. Williams (1985), 262 Pa. Super. 540 - Commonwealth v. Gore (1978)

3 federal appellate · 52 state decisions

28019751980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Concurring and Dissenting Opinion by

Jacobs, J.:

¶2Although I agree with the majority’s treatment of the first ten issues raised on appeal, I cannot agree that the lower court abused its discretion in sentencing appellant Burgess. “The trial judge has broad discretion in imposing sentence. If the sentence imposed is within statutory limits, there is no abuse of discretion unless *565the sentence is manifestly excessive so as to inflict too severe a punishment. This court has the power to modify an obviously excessive sentence, but has rarely utilized that power, preferring instead to rely on the good judgment of the trial judge.” Commonwealth v. Riggins, 232 Pa. Superior Ct. 32, 34, 332 A.2d 521, 522 (1974) (citations omitted).

¶3A defendant’s prior criminal record is only one of many factors to be considered by the trial judge in imposing sentence. Where, as in the present case, a defendant’s sentence is within the statutory limits, the mere fact that he has committed fewer prior criminal offenses than a co-defendant does not require that he receive a correspondingly lesser sentence than the co-defendant.

¶4For these reasons, I would not disturb the sentence of the court below.

¶5Watkins, P. J., and Van der Voort, J., join in this opinion.

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