Commonwealth v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 24 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 27 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"In Commonwealth ex rel. West v. Rundle, 428 Pa. 102 , 237 A.2d 196 . . . we held that henceforth in Pennsylvania it should be the practice that an on-the-record examination of the defendant be conducted by the lower Court to determine if the plea was voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently entered. Boykin v. Alabama, [ 395 U.S. 238 , 89 S.Ct. 1709 , 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969)] made what had already been the law in Pennsylvania after West and Pa.R.Crim.P. 319(a) into a Federal Constitutional dimension — to-wit, there must be an on-the-record examination by the lower Court to determine if the guilty plea was properly entered. Since Boykin was not made retroactive, Commonwealth v. Godfrey, 434 Pa. 532 , 254 A.2d 923 , and the guilty plea was entered prior to the decision in West, appellant has the burden of proving that his guilty plea was not voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently made." (Citations omitted.) (Emphasis in original.) Since appellant here, like the appellant in Brown , plead guilty prior to our decision in West, and since he was represented by counsel at the guilty plea hearing, an on-the-record guilty plea colloquy was not required, and the burden is now on appellant to show that his plea was not knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily entered.”

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