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

1. “1. His confessions and prosecutions were the result of prosecutorial misconduct in the form of a violation of a grant of immunity; 2. His inculpatory statements should have been suppressed due to an unreasonable period of questioning without arraignment; 3. His conviction was obtained by use of a confession involuntarily given under his subjective, belief, based on advice of counsel, that federal promises of immunity and confidentiality prevented any use of the confessions against him; 4. His confessions were obtained through prosecutorial and police misconduct in that neither the police nor the prosecutor told him that his federal immunity had been withdrawn; 5. He was denied the right of confrontation in that his cross-examination of a newspaper reporter was improperly restricted; 6. His statements were improperly introduced into evidence at trial without independent proof of corpus delicti; 7. There was insufficient evidence to establish that petitioner’s co-conspirator shot the victims, apart from petitioner’s statements; 8. He received ineffective assistance of counsel in that: a. Pre-trial counsel permitted petitioner to give an inculpatory statement to newspaper reporters; b. Trial counsel failed to move to suppress petitioner’s statements as fruits of a violation of a grant of immunity; c. Trial counsel failed to object to admission of a tape of his confession to the Fishman murder; d. Trial counsel failed to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence on the grounds th”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. Sklar v. Ryan

2. “In general, immunity statutes protect persons who are compelled to give testimony, from the use of the compelled testimony and evidence derived therefrom in subsequent criminal prosecutions____ Neither immunity statutes nor the Fifth Amendment, however, “endow the person who testifies with a license to commit perjury.” ... Accordingly, the United States Supreme Court has upheld convictions for perjury committed during the giving of a compelled statement where the respondent’s immunized statement was used at a subsequent prosecution for making false statements....”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 322 Pa. Super. 199 - Commonwealth v. Hawkins

3. “When an attempted abuse of the immunity grant becomes apparent, it is only proper that the granting official revoke the immunity. Therefore, the United States Attorney acted properly in this case when he declared that he would not be bound by the original offer of immunity....”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 355 Pa. Super. 425 - Commonwealth v. Upchurch