397 Pa. Super. 265 - Commonwealth v. Franklin’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 26 later decisions — most recently October 2025 · most notably 416 Pa. Super. 329 - Commonwealth v. Scarfo (1992), 428 Pa. Super. 259 - Commonwealth v. Donahue (1993)
25 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 Davis v. Alaska · Ohio v. Roberts · Chambers v. Mississippi · Pointer v. Texas · Washington v. Texas
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 26 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“An accomplice charge with respect to a witness is warranted when evidence at trial either requires or permits the inference that the witness may have been a participant in the crime charged. It is reversible error for a trial court not to give an accomplice charge if the evidence permits an inference that a witness was an accomplice. However, where the evidence does not permit the jury to infer that a Commonwealth witness was an accomplice, the trial court is empowered to conclude, as a matter of law, that the witness was not an accomplice. In such a case, an accomplice charge is not required.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.