392 Pa. Super. 280 - Commonwealth v. Rasheed’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Where a criminal defendant does not testify, and specifically requests the court not to charge that he has the right not to testify and that no adverse inference may be drawn from his failure to take the witness stand, we have held that it is error for the court to give the instruction concerning a defendant’s right to remain silent. Our rationale in Rasheed was that defense counsel and his or her client should be able to decide [whether] they want the jury to focus on the fact that the defendant has not testified. We recognized that the jury will be aware of this fact, but in some cases the defendant may not want this highlighted. Similarly, in those cases involving an alibi defense, I believe that the defendant and defense counsel should not be deprived of the right to control trial strategy.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Hawkins