284 Pa. Super. 60 - Commonwealth v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The United States Supreme Court has enunciated principally two types of prosecutorial overreaching. First there is the prosecutorial misconduct which is designed to provoke a mistrial in order to secure a second, perhaps more favorable, opportunity to convict the defendant. See United States v. Dinitz, supra at 611, 96 S.Ct. at 1081 . Second there is the prosecutorial misconduct undertaken in bad faith to prejudice or harass the defendant. See Lee v. United States, supra [ 432 U.S. 23 ] at 32, 97 S.Ct. [2141] at 2147 [ 52 L.Ed.2d 80 ]; United States v. Dinitz, supra at 611, 96 S.Ct. at 1081-82 . In contrast to prosecutorial error, overreaching is not an inevitable part of the trial process and cannot be condoned. It signals the breakdown of the integrity of the judicial proceeding, and represents the type of prosecutorial tactic which the double jeopardy clause was designed to protect against.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 296 Pa. Super. 235 - Commonwealth v. Custor