Commonwealth v. Walker’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
219 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 219 later decisions — most recently September 2018 · most notably Commonwealth v. Rhodes (1986), Commonwealth v. McKenna (1978)
219 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 Benton v. Maryland · Ex parte Lange · Kepner v. United States · Commonwealth v. Cox · 233 Pa. Super. 77 - Commonwealth v. Tisdale
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 219 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A]nalysis of duplicitous sentence questions has traditionally revolved around the concept of injury to the sovereign, in this case the Commonwealth. One of the purposes of the criminal law is to punish offenses against the Commonwealth, as defined by the Legislature, and it follows that, `[t]he criminal prosecution is for the injury done to the Commonwealth, and not for the injury done to the individual who may, if entitled, obtain redress through a civil action. Where there is but one act of cause of injury, or death of a number of persons, there is but one injury to the Commonwealth, but where the acts or causes are separate, they are separate injuries to the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth ...'”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The lawfulness of those sentences must be viewed together, where as here, the facts set out in the indictment make out but a single act upon which the charges in the indictment rest.” Id., 468 Pa. at 330 n. 3, 362 A.2d at 230 n. 3.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“it is beyond the power of a court imposing sentence to impose multiple sentences on a defendant for a single act.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.