Commonwealth v. Willis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

14 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “We do not condone the practice of counsel from the public defender’s office raising the effective assistance of counsel where trial counsel is a different attorney from the same public defender’s office. If a genuine issue of the effectiveness of trial counsel exists, then the public defender should request the trial court to appoint appellate counsel who is not a member of the public defender’s office. The allegation of ineffective assistance of counsel is tantamount to an allegation of incompetency on the part of counsel____ The best interest of an appellant is not served where his counsel must establish that an associate from his office acted in an incompetent manner at trial.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 321 Pa. Super. 170 - Commonwealth v. Smith

2. “A PCHA petitioner alleging ineffective assistance of counsel may not be represented by an attorney from the same office as the allegedly ineffective attorney, regardless of the fact that one started working there after the other left. The later attorney, by reason of his association with the same office, still has an appearance of a conflict of interest threatening his duty of zealous advocacy.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 306 Pa. Super. 361 - Commonwealth v. Delker