340 Pa. Super. 26 - Commonwealth v. Johnson’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently May 2014
7 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. Bighum · Wiegand v. Wiegand · Nash v. United States · Crest Finance Co. v. United States · Lehigh Valley Cooperative Farmers, Inc. v. United States
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 7 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“1) the degree to which the commission of the prior offense reflects upon the veracity of the defendant-witness; 2) The likelihood, in view of the nature and extent of the prior record, that it would have a greater tendency to smear the character of the defendant and suggest a propensity to commit the crime for which he stands charged, rather than provide a legitimate reason for discrediting him as an untruthful person; 3) the age and circumstances of the defendant; (4) the strength of the prosecution’s case and the prosecution’s need to resort to the evidence as compared with the availability to the defense of other witnesses through which its version of the events surrounding the incident can be presented; and 5) the existence of alternative means of attacking the defendant’s credibility.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“There was evidence, members of the jury, which tended to prove that the defendant had a prior criminal record. I am speaking of the fact that he admitted that he had been convicted of unauthorized use of an automobile. In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania this is what we call a crimen falsi, a crime of falsehood. This evidence is not evidence of the defendant’s guilt. You must not infer guilt from the evidence of prior convictions or bad reputation for truth. This evidence may be considered by you for one purpose only, that is, to help you judge the credibility and weight of the testimony given by the defendant as a witness in this trial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.