Walsh v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

8 federal appellate · 1 district · 13 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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “We note finally that the Pearce rule does not seem suited to Appellate Division proceedings. It does not permit consideration of any factors but the defendant’s conduct subsequent to the first trial. Such a rule would seriously hamper the work of the Appellate Division because it would limit it to the brief period that the defendant has been serving the sentence in the State prison or a reformatory awaiting hearing on the appeal. Moreover, the rule would preclude consideration of the very factor which the Appellate Division was established to consider: whether a particular defendant’s sentence is excessively short or long compared to other defendants’ sentences for the same or similar offences. Since the Supreme Court was not considering this procedure, we do not believe that it meant the Pearce rule to apply to it. We note that for similar reasons at least one Federal appellate court has refused to apply the Pearce rule to the imposition of a harsher sentence than that imposed by a State District Court after a trial de novo in a State Superior Court. Lemieux v. Robbins, 414 F.2d 353 (1st Cir.). Cf. Torrance v. Henry, 304 F.Supp. 725 (E.D.N.C.).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Walsh v. Picard