Commonwealth v. Whelan’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently October 2022
17 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. Ingram · Commonwealth v. Forbes · Commonwealth v. Willis · Commonwealth v. Dilbeck · Commonwealth v. Zakrzewski
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 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“1. The Defendant entered a guilty plea after the commencement of her trial and after the jury was selected and sworn, but before any testimony was presented. 2. At the time Defendant entered her plea, the Commonwealth had several witnesses from Arizona, New York and Ohio, as well as Pennsylvania. The testimony from the witness from the state of Arizona would have provided documentary proof to dispute the Defendant’s proposed defense that she did not have knowledge of how to manufacture the controlled substance in question. 3. Because of the entry of her plea, the standby witnesses were released, and if this case were to go to trial, such witnesses would have to be relocated or replaced, if not presently available, at considerable expense to the Commonwealth. 4. At the time Defendant entered her guilty plea, a thorough Guilty Plea Colloquy occurred which established that her plea was knowingly and voluntarily entered. 7. The Court finds that the Commonwealth would be substantially prejudiced if Defendant is allowed to withdraw her plea. Defendant would have an unfair advantage since by waiting until after the jury was selected and sworn to plead guilty, she obtained a preview of the Commonwealth evidence and can now adjust her trial strategy. Also, her actions, if allowed to succeed, might be a means of obtaining an entirely new jury for a defendant who feels that the jury originally selected is not favorable [sic] disposed to her cause, even though there exits no grounds for ”
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.