421 Pa. Super. 527 - Commonwealth v. Loach’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently May 2013
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 City of Hazleton v. City Council · United States v. Spock · Commonwealth v. Lawson · United States ex rel. Matthews v. Johnson · 396 Pa. Super. 92 - Commonwealth v. Thomas
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.
“While the jury must serve as the sole finder of fact, the trial court has a duty to frame legal issues for the jury and instruct the jury on the applicable law. One method by which the court may choose to clarify issues for the jury is to direct the jury to consider at the outset the most serious form of the offense with which the defendant has been charged. If the jury were first to consider a less serious form of the offense, it might return a verdict of guilty of the lesser charge without determining whether the Commonwealth also proved the additional facts necessary to establish the more serious crime. By directing the jury to begin its deliberations with the greater offense, the judge can help to ensure that the jury will bring its independent judgment to bear on all important aspects of the Commonwealth’s case. Thus, as a general rule, a progression charge is proper where the defendant is charged with different forms or degrees of the same crime. [See ] Pharr v. Israel, 629 F.2d 1278 (7th Cir.1980) cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1088 , 101 S.Ct. 880 , 66 L.Ed.2d 815 (1981) (charge that jury should consider lesser degrees of homicide only if defendant acquitted of first degree murder did not violate right to jury trial); Commonwealth v. Sanders, 380 Pa.Super. 78 , 551 A.2d 239 (1988) (charge that jury should consider second degree robbery charge only if defendant was acquitted of first degree robbery did not invade province of jury).”
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.