409 Pa. Super. 568 - Commonwealth v. Jackson’s Empirical Analysis
1991
Citation profile
10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently September 2015
10 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 Roviaro v. United States · Johnson v. Righetti · Eckman v. Commonwealth · Commonwealth v. Carter · Jarrad v. United States
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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“There is no fixed rule with respect to [the] disclosure of an informant. The problem is one that calls for [a] balancing [of] the public interest in protecting the flow of information against the individual’s right to prepare his [or her] defense. Whether a proper balance renders nondisclosure erroneous must depend on the particular circumstances of each case, taking into consideration the crime charged, the possible defenses, the possible significance of the informer’s testimony and other relevant factors. Before disclosure of an informant’s identity will be required, more is necessary than a mere assertion by the defendant that such disclosure might be helpful in establishing a particular defense. Although the defendant plainly cannot be expected to show that such information will actually be helpful to his defense, the record should at least suggest a reasonable possibility that the information might be helpful, so that it would be unfair to withhold it____ [Also,] there must be some showing that revelation is necessary. For example, the informant’s identity may be necessary to the defense where the evidence against the defendant proceeds solely from the testimony of police officers, and the only relatively neutral eyewitness to the crime is the informant. Other situations where the informant’s identity would be helpful are where the defendant alleges entrapment or where there is an identification issue. Conversely, when. an informant has not been an eyewitness to and has ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“self-contradictory mandatory, permissive interlocutory appeal”
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.