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508 Pa. 198

495 A.2d 176

Commonwealth v. Claypool

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided June 26, 1985

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1985-06-26

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1985-06-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 168 later decisions — most recently June 2023 · most notably Commonwealth v. Lark (1988), Commonwealth v. LaCava (1995)

166 state decisions

99019851990200020102020decided

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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McDERMOTT, Justice,

¶1concurring.

¶2I join the majority in holding that a threat, fortified with an example from the actor’s criminal past, as proof of a present intention to gain a criminal purpose, is as admissible as a gun, knife, bomb or any other threat. If he chooses to use his criminal past as a token of his sincerity, he is no more prejudiced than was his victim.

¶3A “threat” can be as palpable as a steel blade, the muzzle of a gun, or a ticking bomb. If the tool one uses to accomplish a criminal purpose prejudices him, so much the worse for him.

FLAHERTY and PAPADAKOS, JJ., join in this concurring opinion.
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