Commonwealth v. McGuire

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided December 21, 1979

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1979-12-21

Relies on Commonwealth v. O'SEARO · Commonwealth v. Hinchcliffe · Commonwealth v. Ford

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1979-12-21

How this case has been cited

Cited by 33 later decisions — most recently March 2024 · most notably Commonwealth v. Rawles (1983), 433 Pa. Super. 432 - Commonwealth v. La (1994)

33 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.

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ROBERTS, Justice,

¶1dissenting.

¶2I dissent. There is no dispute that appellant Charles L. McGuire shot the victim in the back and caused his death. It is well established that a fact finder may infer malice from the use of a deadly weapon upon a vital part of the body. E. g., Commonwealth v. Hinchcliffe, 479 Pa. 551, 388 A.2d 1068 (1978); Commonwealth v. O’Searo, 466 Pa. 224, 352 A.2d 30 (1976). Reading all the evidence of this case in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, Commonwealth v. Ford, 472 Pa. 542, 372 A.2d 821 (1977), I must conclude that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the judge’s finding of malice.