Commonwealth v. Whitaker’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

56 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 56 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “"In its well-known decision in Wong Sun v. United States, [ 371 U.S. 471 , 83 S.Ct. 407 , 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1965)], the Supreme Court of the United States restated the principle that the exclusionary rule which prohibits the use of evidence obtained from an accused in violation of the Fourth or Fifth Amendments prohibits also the indirect use of such evidence. On the question as to what evidence must be considered as obtained as a direct result of an unlawful invasion, and so excluded, the Court said, in a frequently quoted passage: `We need not hold that all evidence is "fruit of the poisonous tree" simply because it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the police. Rather, the more apt question in such a case is "whether, granting the establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint."' Wong Sun, supra, . . . at 487-88, 83 S.Ct. 407 . . . . quoting Maguire, Evidence of Guilt (1959). See also Commonwealth v. Garvin, 448 Pa. 258 , 293 A.2d 33 . "Whether challenged evidence has been sufficiently purged of an impermissible taint, here the clearly unlawful arrest, to render it admissible must be determined from the totality of the circumstances surrounding each particular case. . . . (Citations omitted.) "In virtually all of the `fruit of the poisonous tree' cases which this Court has cons”

   6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Wideman · Commonwealth v. Montgomery

2. ““The Commonwealth contends that our decision in Commonwealth v. Garvih, supra, indicates a contrary result. It is argued that because the police knew the identity of Barton before appellant’s unlawful arrest, it cannot be assumed that, absent appellant’s incrimination of Barton, the latter would never have been arrested and so never would have made his confession implicating Whitaker. We cannot agree. In Garvin , the defendant was illegally arrested for robbery and taken to the scene of the robbery, where he was identified by one of the victims. The proof revealed that the victim had had an opportunity to observe her assailant for as long as five minutes under good lighting conditions. There was thus clearly a basis for the identification wholly independent of the unconstitutional arrest. We held that the identification evidence was not the product of the unlawful arrest because the arrest had ‘contributed neither to the knowledge of the witnesses nor to the accuracy of their identification.’ Commonwealth v. Garvin, 448 Pa. at 266 , 293 A.2d at 38 . It was in that context, then, that we said that ‘the only effect of the illegal arrest was to hasten the inevitable confrontation and not to influence its outcome.... We cannot assume that but for the illegal arrest the appellant would have remained at large indefinitely.’ id. “In the case at bar, as noted above, the Commonwealth concedes that the illegal arrest of appellant did contribute substantially to the arrest of Barton. ..”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Nicholson

3. “Whether challenged evidence has been sufficiently purged of an impermissible taint, here the clearly unlawful arrest, to render it admissible must be determined from the totality of the circumstances surrounding each particular case. . . . (Citations omitted.) "In virtually all of the `fruit of the poisonous tree' cases which this Court has considered, there have existed only two links in the alleged causal chain, i.e., the initial illegality and the challenged physical or verbal evidence resulting therefrom. . . .”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Wideman