Commonwealth v. Grace’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

81 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 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““A timely written ‘motion in arrest of judgment or for a new trial’ was filed in the trial court, but only ‘boiler-plate’ challenges to the validity of the convictions were advanced in this motion. It did include a request for permission to file ‘additional reasons in support of this motion’ after the transcription of the notes of testimony but ‘additional reasons’ were never filed in the form of a supplemental motion. On appeal, several assignments of error are asserted which were not included in the post-verdict motion filed in the trial court and under Commonwealth v. Blair, 460 Pa. 31 , 331 A. 2d 213 (1975) may be ruled waived. However, at the time of argument on the post-verdict motion appellant’s counsel did file a ‘memorandum in support of motion for a new trial’ which included all of the assignments of error now advanced and the trial court accepted and considered the merit of these assignments of error without objection. Under the circumstances, we will consider the issues preserved for our review. We do so because the written ‘memorandum’ assured certainty in the record and assures us the issues were presented to the post-verdict motion court. But we again remind counsel that written post-verdict motions must be filed and these motions must include every assignment of error which counsel wishes to preserve for appellate review.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Twiggs · Commonwealth v. Jones