373 Pa. Super. 23 - Commonwealth v. Waggoner’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

23 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 23 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Waggoner was given his Miranda warnings ..., he stated that he could not afford a lawyer. This statement constituted an ambiguous assertion of his right to counsel. The statement was directly at odds with [the interrogating officer’s] explanation to Waggoner that if he could not afford a lawyer, he could have one appointed for him free of charge. Considering Waggoner’s response, one could easily draw the conclusion that Waggoner had failed to understand that he could have a free lawyer appointed for him. Moreover, Wag-goner’s statement would seem to indicate that if he could have afforded a lawyer, he would have wanted one present. Waggoner’s ambiguous response prevents one from stating with unswerving confidence that he fully understood he had the right to have a lawyer appointed for him at no cost and that he waived that right. [The interrogating police officer] responded to Waggoner’s inconsistent reply by continuing with the Miranda colloquy. ... [The interrogating officer] never attempted to clarify whether Waggoner had understood his right to have counsel free of charge. The fact that Waggoner ultimately .decided that he might answer [the officer’s] questions ... did not obviate the need to establish that he had understood and waived his right to counsel. In eases such as this, when a defendant’s statement regarding his Miranda rights is ambiguous and inconsistent with an officer’s explanation of those rights, the officer should ask questions to clarify what the defenda”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Hoey

2. “[videotaping of Waggoner’s field sobriety tests made exact reconstruction of his performance of the test possible. Instead of being exposed to a police officer’s description at trial of how Wag-goner had performed the field sobriety tests, Waggoner had his performance accurately captured on tape. Moreover, since the Fifth Amendment provides no protection against having one’s physical performance of the tests recorded on videotape, his counsel’s presence at the videotaping would have made no difference. Waggoner would have still been required to perform the tests. Furthermore, when the videotape was shown at trial, Waggoner had the opportunity to argue that his poor performance of the tests was due to his arthritic condition rather than to his state of intoxication. Thus, any risk involved in the visual aspect of the videotaped sobriety tests could have been sufficiently cured at trial.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2001 Pa. Super. 7 - Commonwealth v. Weaver

3. “[the defendant's] verbalizations during the videotaping must be suppressed unless he made a voluntary, knowing and intelligent waiver of his rights after receiving his Miranda warnings.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 377 Pa. Super. 598 - Commonwealth v. Thompson