327 Pa. Super. 234 - Commonwealth v. Fried’s Empirical Analysis
1984
Citation profile
15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently March 2026
15 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. Ware · Commonwealth v. Turza · Commonwealth v. Gockley · Commonwealth v. Milliken · Commonwealth v. Burns
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Thus, the rule requires the Commonwealth must sustain an initial burden of proof by preliminarily establishing to the satisfaction of the trial judge that the death occurred under circumstances which were more consistent with criminality than with natural causes or accident. Once the Commonwealth has sustained this initial and preliminary burden of proof, which is admittedly slight, the admissions of the accused become admissible. It is for the trial judge to decide whether the Commonwealth has sustained the burden of preliminarily establishing the corpus delicti. This preliminary burden of proof must be distinguished from the Commonwealth’s ultimate burden of proof, namely, the requirement that it establish beyond a reasonable doubt each and every element of the crime to the satisfaction of the fact-finder.”
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.