Commonwealth v. Williams’s Empirical Analysis
1989
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 85 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 89 later decisions — most recently October 2015 · most notably Commonwealth v. Anderson (1994), Commonwealth v. Weakland (1989)
2 federal appellate · 85 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 344 Pa. Super. 108 - Commonwealth v. Williams · Commonwealth v. Williams · Commonwealth v. Richardson · 271 Pa. Super. 131 - Commonwealth v. Jackson · 368 Pa. Super. 315 - Commonwealth v. Williams
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 89 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) attempts to cause serious bodily injury to another, or causes such injury intentionally, knowingly or recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Mjerger is required only when two prerequisites are met. First, the crimes must ‘necessarily involve’ one another. Second, even if the two crimes necessarily involve one another, they do not merge if there are substantially different interests of the Commonwealth at stake and the defendant’s act has injured each interest. To determine whether multiple offenses involve substantially different interests, or how many evils are present in a given criminal act, the sentencing court must examine both the language of the particular statutes and the context in which each statute appears in the Crimes code.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[W]e now hold that except for lesser included offenses, the doctrine of merger based on whether the Commonwealth has an interest in prosecuting a criminal defendant for more than one crime is hereby abrogated and abolished. It follows, therefore, that the crimes of aggravated assault and unlawful restraint in the instant case do not merge, for one of these crimes is not a lesser included offense of the other, and there is no argument, apart from the interest analysis, in favor of their merger.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.