Commonwealth v. Morales’s Empirical Analysis
1973
Citation profile
44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 44 later decisions — most recently October 2022 · most notably Commonwealth v. Shaffer (1982), Commonwealth v. McLaughlin (1976)
44 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 Commonwealth v. Forbes · Commonwealth v. Santos · United States v. De Cavalcante
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 44 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Although the court based its decision to refuse appellant’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea on a finding that appellant’s claim that he did not fully understand the nature and consequences of his plea was not to be believed, this would not in itself be controlling on the issue of whether to permit the withdrawal of a guilty plea before sentencing in the absence of a showing of prejudice. As we said in Santos, supra: ‘A trial court, [in presentence situations], abuses its discretion by not allowing a guilty plea to be freely withdrawn prior to sentencing when the Commonwealth would not be substantially prejudiced by the plea withdrawal.’ At page 496, 301 A.2d at page 831 .” (Emphasis supplied.)”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Since the record in the instant case fully supports the court’s finding that appellant originally decided to plead guilty because “he felt that the Commonwealth’s testimony proved his guilt” (opinion of the trial court) and that this decision was a knowing and voluntary one, we do not find that the court abused its discretion in refusing to allow the withdrawal of the plea. Commonwealth v. Morales, supra, 452 Pa. at 56 , 305 A.2d at 13-14 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““If the trial court finds ‘any fair and just reason’, withdrawal of the plea before sentence should be freely permitted, unless the prosecution has been ‘substantially prejudiced.’ ””
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.