Commonwealth v. Costa’s Empirical Analysis
1999
Citation profile
21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently March 2021
21 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 Doyle v. Ohio · Commonwealth v. Turner · Commonwealth v. Nolen · Commonwealth v. Clark
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 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We have consistently regarded testimony about a defendant’s silence as having an extremely high potential for prejudice. In Clark, 533 Pa. at 587, 626 A.2d at 157-58 (footnote omitted), this court stated: “An impermissible reference to an accused’s post-arrest silence constitutes reversible error unless shown to be harmless.... Because of its nature, an impermissible reference to the accused’s post-arrest silence is innately prejudicial.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he appellate court concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that the error could not have contributed to the verdict. If there is a reasonable possibility that the error may have contributed to the verdict, it is not harmless. In reaching that conclusion, the reviewing court will find an error harmless where the uncontra-dicted evidence of guilt is overwhelming, so that by comparison the error is insignificant.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“An impermissible reference to an accused's post-arrest silence constitutes reversible error unless shown to be harmless.... Because of its nature, an impermissible reference to the accused's post-arrest silence is innately prejudicial.”
1 later decision 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.