379 Pa. Super. 538 - Commonwealth v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1988
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently July 2008
16 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. Campana · Hicks v. State · Commonwealth v. Goldhammer · Commonwealth v. Brown · Hall v. People
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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“... The force used in taking the purse from the victim's arm was a harmful touching of the person, accompanied with sufficient force to compel the victim to part with the conscious control of her property, and supports a robbery conviction under § 3701. This conduct substantially differs from the case of the thief who merely takes the property of another with intent permanently to deprive him thereof, using no force or threat of force on the victim like the pickpocket... . Such conduct is non-violent, poses no threat to the victim who is unaware of the taking, and is accordingly graded less severely than robbery. A victim who is aware of the taking of property from his person is apt to reflex action to protect himself and his property and thus may be injured by the felon... . [R]obbery has always been considered a greater harm against society because violence is caused or threatened. The ordinary citizen has the right to go about his way free from the fear of attack to his person from those who would deprive him of control over his goods. That right is violated even by the slight tug on the arm by the purse thief who must use force to wrench the purse from the arm of the victim without regard to her safety.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“indicate that the phrase `force however slight' envisions that the victim must be aware of the force and, because of the force, feel compelled to part with his or her property.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“to determine whether robbery or theft occurs when an unconscious, intoxicated victim is rolled over onto his side and his wallet is stolen out of his pants pocket.”
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.