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417 Pa. Super. 119

611 A.2d 1294

Commonwealth v. Green

Superior Court of Pennsylvania

Decided July 6, 1992

Superior Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1992-07-06

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1992-07-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently December 2011

10 state decisions

60199220002010decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

KELLY, Judge,

¶1concurring.

¶2I join the majority opinion to the extent the majority determines that it was improper to inject references to specific instances of criminal activity irrelevant to the case before the jury. This, of course, was an ad hominem appeal to the jurors general sense of outrage regarding the increasingly violent nature of our society.

¶3I wish to note however, that I find nothing whatsoever inappropriate about the prosecution’s argument that motive need not always be considered. The fact is, indiscriminate crime is indeed prevalent in our society. Motive, therefore, is unnecessary in establishing a case against a defendant. *131Thus, if the prosecution had merely argued that, given the prevalence of indiscriminate crime in our society, no motive necessarily need be shown; I would not hesitate to affirm judgment of sentence.

¶4However, the prosecutor herein not only included references to specific instances of criminal behavior with no logical or factual nexus to the events of this case, he argued that motive was irrelevant as a matter of law. Such argument constituted reversible error, as the majority correctly concludes.

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