273 Pa. Super. 88 - Commonwealth v. Martin’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
8 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently March 2000
8 state decisions
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.
Relationships
Relies on Witherspoon v. Illinois · McGautha v. California · Commonwealth v. Glass · Commonwealth v. Jacobs · Commonwealth Ex Rel. Fitzpatrick v. Bullock
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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Defendant claims that the Commonwealth should be charged with the responsibility of knowing whether aggravating circumstances exist. However, witnesses’ trial testimony often differs from the statements they give prior to trial and it is often impossible for anyone to know prior to trial what testimony will be adduced at the trial. For example, 18 Pa.C.S. 1311(d)(7) provides that where a defendant knowingly creates a grave risk of death to another person in addition to the victim of the offense during the commission of the offense that an “aggravating circumstance” exists. Whether such a situation occurred during a murder is solely for the jury’s determination and may only be determined from the facts of each specific case presented during the trial of that case.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.