Commonwealth v. Simons’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
65 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 65 later decisions — most recently February 2022 · most notably Commonwealth v. Smith (1992), State v. Breit (1996)
65 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.
Relationships
Relies on Illinois v. Gates · Green v. United States · Oregon v. Kennedy · United States v. Dinitz · Massachusetts v. Upton
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 65 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We now hold that the double jeopardy clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution prohibits retrial of a defendant not only when prosecutorial misconduct is intended to provoke the defendant into moving for a mistrial, but also when the conduct of the prosecutor is intentionally undertaken to prejudice the defendant to the point of the denial of a fair trial.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“In light of the altered basis of [Commonwealth v. Starks [ 490 Pa. 336 , 416 A.2d 498 (1980) ], we now declare that henceforth double jeopardy will attach only to those mistrials which have been intentionally caused by prosecutorial misconduct.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“Concerning as it does the alleged concealment of information which was necessary to the truth-determining process, the alleged misconduct, even if proved, could well never satisfy the federal standard, as concealment will always negate any “intent to goad the defendant to request a mistrial.” The intent of concealment, indeed its essence, is that the defendant would never know the facts and, thus, would not base any claim for relief on those facts. Should the Commonwealth’s concealment of necessary information vitiate the double jeopardy protection afforded by our constitution? I think not. As Judge Del Sole opined below, “I find no functional difference between intentional misconduct, engaged in by the prosecution in order to avoid an acquittal by causing a mistrial and intentional misconduct, engaged in by the prosecution in concealing evidence, which results in a guilty verdict. In either case, the conduct of the prosecution once established, places the defendant twice in jeopardy for the same crime.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.