254 Pa. Super. 284 - Commonwealth v. Dennison’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “It obviously is a “love note,” but the question is whether it implies more, thereby, rendering it a confession of paternity. The [above quoted] sentence is the crucial one. Does it mean that they had had sexual relations under eondi-tions that might result in her pregnancy, about which he was concerned because of her mother’s reaction; or does it mean that he had not had sexual relations with her, but he loved her regardless of the fact that he knew she had had relations with someone else which might have resulted in her pregnancy and cause her mother to react? We find the former to be more plausiblé. The letter was such that the jury might have interpreted it as a confession that the defendant had had sexual relations with the prosecutrix, one of the necessary elements on which the charge against him was based, and finding that, might imply from his concerns about the mother’s reaction to her daughter’s pregnancy, that he was the father of the child. Thus it might have concluded that it was a confession of paternity.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 2012 Pa. Super. 157 - Commonwealth v. Barnett