Commonwealth v. Lutz’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 federal appellate · 1 district · 145 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 156 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[T]he decision to submit the case for ARD rests in the sound discretion of the district attorney, and absent an abuse of that discretion involving some criteria for admission to ARD wholly, patently and without doubt unrelated to the protection of society and/or the likelihood of a person’s success in rehabilitation, such as race, religion or other such obviously prohibited considerations, the attorney for the Commonwealth must be free to submit a case or not submit it for ARD consideration based on his view of what is most beneficial for society and the offender.”

   20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 358 Pa. Super. 233 - Commonwealth v. Mowry · 388 Pa. Super. 271 - Commonwealth v. Simmons

2. “[T]he criminal defendant has no right to demand that he be placed on ARD merely because any particular offense is his first. Rather, society, for its own protection, has an interest in carrying out the penalties prescribed by the legislature for drunk driving, except in the cases where even society’s representative in the case, the district attorney, acting in conjunction with the court, and subject always to the restrictions set out in [75 Pa.C.S.A.] Section 3731(d) (concerning persons who may not be admitted to ARD) determines that ARD is preferable to conviction because of the strong likelihood that a given criminal defendant will in fact be rehabilitated by an ARD program.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 397 Pa. Super. 59 - Commonwealth v. Stranges · 1999 Pa. Super. 232 - Commonwealth v. Jagodzinski

3. “ARD, accelerated rehabilitative disposition, is a pretrial disposition of certain cases, in which the attorney for the Commonwealth agrees to suspend prosecution for an agreed upon period of time in exchange for the defendant’s successful participation in a rehabilitation program, the content of which is to be determined by the court and applicable statutes. Under ARD rules, which [the Pennsylvania Supreme Court] created in 1972 pursuant to our authority to supervise the lower courts, the district attorney has the discretion to refuse to submit a case for ARD, and if the case is submitted for ARD, the' court must approve the defendant’s admission. These rules, which appear at Pa. R.Crim.P. 175-185, 4 also provide that the defendant must agree to the terms of the ARD, and that after he has completed the program successfully, the charges against him will be dismissed, upon order of court.' If he does not complete the ARD successfully, he may be prosecuted for the offense with which he was charged. The district attorney’s utilization of ARD is optional under the rules. The impetus behind the creation of such rules was the belief shared by the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice that some “cases which are relatively minor or which involve social or behavioral problems ... can best be solved by programs and treatments rather than by punishment.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 366 Pa. Super. 54 - Commonwealth v. Becker · Commonwealth v. Lebo