Commonwealth v. Starr’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 198 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 201 later decisions — most recently October 2023 · most notably Commonwealth v. Shaffer (1982), 237 Pa. Super. 336 - Commonwealth v. Roberts (1975)
3 federal appellate · 198 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 Brady v. United States · Commonwealth v. Forbes · Commonwealth v. Alvarado · Commonwealth v. Scoleri · Commonwealth v. Robinson
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 201 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““At any time before sentence, the court may, in its discretion, permit or direct a plea of guilty to be withdrawn and a plea of not guilty substituted.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“entered or ratified by the defendant without knowledge of the charge or that the sentence actually imposed could be imposed.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“It is well recognized that a pre-sentencing plea withdrawal motion and a post-sentencing plea withdrawal motion present entirely different problems. As a general rule, the guilty plea itself is ‘the defendant’s consent that the judgment of conviction may be entered without a trial.’ Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 748 , 90 S.Ct. 1463 [1469], 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970). Nothing remains to be done following acceptance of a valid plea save to impose sentence. Consequently, a motion to withdraw a guilty plea made before sentencing normally precedes any indication by the court of what penalty will be exacted. There is therefore little risk that the defendant will enter a guilty plea and then withdraw it before sentencing as a means of testing the court’s attitude towards sentencing. Similarly, there is less risk that the prosecution will be substantially prejudiced by the withdrawal, before sentencing, of a constitutionally valid guilty plea. It is otherwise with a post-sentencing petition to withdraw a guilty plea. Such a procedure obviously would be useful as a sentence testing device, and, if permitted with any degree of liberality, would invite abuse. Id., 450 Pa. at 488-489 , 301 A.2d at 594 .”
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.