Commonwealth v. Caldwell’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 40 later decisions — most recently December 2015 · most notably Commonwealth v. Henry (1990), Commonwealth v. Wharton (1992)
40 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 Local 408, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. National Labor Relations Board · Smith v. Allwright · Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer · Zettlemoyer v. Pennsylvania · Commonwealth v. Pursell
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 40 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A finding of the existence of the aggravating circumstance set forth in § 9711(d)(5) requires proof that the victim was killed to prevent his testimony in a pending grand jury or criminal proceeding. The existence of this particular aggravating circumstance may be found, absent a pending criminal proceeding, only where the facts establish by direct, rather than circumstantial evidence, that the killing resulted from the intention to eliminate a potential witness. This burden will not be met by simply showing that an individual who witnessed a murder or other felony committed by a defendant was also killed by the defendant.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Neither the efficacy of the means employed by a defendant to murder his victim nor the immediacy of death is in itself determinative of the question whether the offense was committed by means of torture. Commonwealth v. Caldwell, 516 Pa. 441, 448 , 532 A.2d 813, 817 (1987). There must be an indication that the killer was not satisfied with the killing alone. Edmiston, [supra ].”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
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.