320 Pa. Super. 402 - Commonwealth v. Chacker’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
19 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently March 2009
19 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 Commonwealth v. Wexler · Commonwealth of Pa. v. Mullen · Commonwealth v. Armstrong · 270 Pa. Super. 350 - Commonwealth v. Iacino · 263 Pa. Super. 349 - Commonwealth v. Rose
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 19 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We read the unequivocal language in Wexler to foreclose explicitly a hearing court from continuing to shift the burden of persuasion to the petitioner seeking ex-pungement merely because the Commonwealth made out a prima facie case of guilt on the part of the petitioner. Thus, under Wexler , the burden to present compelling evidence against expungement is placed upon the Commonwealth if it has failed to establish the accused’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt (e.g., before the court of common pleas,) or the Commonwealth ‘admits that it is unable to bear its burden of proof.’”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“We do so to dispel the notion that the petitioner seeking to have his/her record expunged is saddled with the burden of proving why his/her request should be granted. Our Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Wexler, 494 Pa. 325 , 431 A.2d 877 (1981) held: 1) if the Common wealth admits that it is unable to bear its burden of proof (as was the case here), then it must bear the burden of justifying why the arrest record should not be expunged; and 2) a judge’s conclusion at the preliminary hearing that the Commonwealth had presented a prima facie case at that time is not dispositive of the issue to expunge.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“The judicial remedy of expunction is an adjunct to the inherent rights of Due Process and is not dependent on express statutory authority. However, expunction is proper only in cases where acquittal is consistent with a finding of real innocence and is not a result of legal technicalities unrelated to questions of guilt or innocence.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.