Commonwealth v. Brady’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Findings of fact. — The General Assembly finds that: (1) organized crime is a highly sophisticated, diversified, and widespread phenomenon which annually drains billions of dollars from the national economy by various patterns of unlawful conduct including the illegal use of force, fraud, and corruption; (2) organized crime exists on a large scale within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, engaging in the same patterns of unlawful conduct which characterize its activities nationally; (3) the vast amounts of money and power accumulated by organized crime are increasingly used to infiltrate and corrupt legitimate businesses operating within the Commonwealth, together with all of the techniques of violence, intimidation, and other forms of unlawful conduct through which such money and power are derived; (4) in furtherance of such infiltration and corruption, organized crime utilizes and applies to its unlawful purposes laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania conferring and relating to the privilege of engaging in various types of business and designed to insure that such businesses are conducted in furtherance of the public interest and the general economic welfare of the Commonwealth; (5) Such infiltration and corruption provide an outlet for illegally obtained capital, harm innocent investors, entrepreneurs, merchants and consumers, interfere with free competition, and thereby constitute a substantial danger to the economic and general welfare of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvani”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. 347 Pa. Super. 403 - Commonwealth v. Goodman

2. “The Fifth Amendment thus defines the relationship between the government and the citizenry. It serves the function in our constitutional democracy of balancing the privacy and dignity of the individual with the power of the government to obtain testimony. While it may generally be asserted that the public “has the right to every man’s evidence,” that right is clearly limited by and subject to the Fifth Amendment. Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547 , 12 S.Ct. 195 , 35 L.Ed. 1110 (1892). It has been recognized, however, that a grant of immunity may “supplant” the Fifth Amendment privilege, provided that it is coextensive with that privilege. This principle is premised upon the view that immunity leaves the witness and the government in substantially the same position as if the witness had claimed his privilege. See, e. g., Kastigar v. United States, 405 U.S. 441 , 92 S.Ct. 1653 , 32 L.Ed.2d 212 (1971); Counselman v. Hitchcock, supra. While we recognize that immunity can be a valuable prosecutorial tool, we must also consider, however, that it constitutes an extraordinary exercise of power. It cannot be denied that a grant of immunity authorizes and even encourages interrogation which would otherwise be prohibited by the Fifth Amendment. Therefore, if a grant of immunity is to erase the line drawn by the privilege between government and citizen, it must be done so with the utmost care, and with the least possible infringement of Fifth Amendment rights, (emphasis added).”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In Re Investigating Grand Jury, Etc.

3. “. . Rather, we are inclined to believe that it is when such acts are the end product of an ‘unlawful agreement ’ that constitute the evil sought to be eradicated by the legislature. Thus,- on the basis of the obvious legislative intention to reach organized, concerted activity, and the plain meaning of the language of Section 6, it is clear that before the authority to confer immunity arises under the Act, there must be a conspiracy to commit any of the substantive offenses as set forth in Section 6. “The Commonwealth also asserts, however, that the language of Section 6 ‘shall include, but not be limited to,’ implies that the legislature must have intended to reach the substantive offenses as well, including others not specifically enumerated in the Act. We agree that the legislature may have foreseen that it could not specifically identify all substantive offenses relating to organized crime, and we therefore agree that the legislature did not limit the [Act’s] applicability to conspiracies to commit only the enumerated crimes. However, we also believe that the legislature intended only to provide sufficient latitude to reach conspiracies [emphasis in original] for any such unenumerated offenses relating to organized crime. We therefore cannot accept the Commonwealth’s assertion that this language indicates a legislative intention to reach something less than concerted activity.” (Emphasis added.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In re the April, 1977, Special Investigating Grand Jury