Commonwealth v. Bolden’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

16 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 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[I]n connection with the death of Brenda Jo Stevens only the following matters if proven to your satisfaction beyond a reasonable doubt can be aggravating circumstances. First, in the commission of the offense, the defendant knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person in addition to the victim of the offense. A person knowingly creates a grave risk of death to another person in addition to the victim of the offense if he’s aware that his conduct is of that nature or that such circumstances exist. Therefore, in deliberating on this aggravating circumstance you should consider all of the evidence concerning the defendant’s conduct at the time of the shooting and the attendant circumstances including the testimony as to the number of people in the bar at the time of the shooting, their relative location and proximity with reference to the defendant at the time of the shooting, the number and direction of shots fired, the danger of ricocheted bullets, whether or not the defendant pointed the gun at another person or persons, evidence of the spent bullets, whether or not the defendant pointed the gun at another person or persons, evidence of the spent bullets in the bar stool, evidence of a hole in the coat of one of the patrons and whether or not that hole was caused by the bullet and evidence of fragments found and their location in the area of the bar.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Drumheller · 701 F. Supp. 2d 671 - Stevens v. Beard

2. ““In the instant case, the majority correctly concludes that there was insufficient evidence to support the Commonwealth’s theory that appellant’s fatal shooting of Mr. Calabro within the sporting goods store placed Mr. Elder in grave risk of death because there was simply no showing that Mr. Elder was put in danger at the time of Mr. Calabro’s murder. To be sure, Mr. Elder was put in danger later, when appellant shot him- — -but that shooting simply did not occur ‘in the commission of the offense,’ i.e., during Mr. Calabro’s murder .... I believe that it would undermine the plain meaning and unambiguous intent of the statute in question to find that (d)(7) applies to cases such as the instant one, where there is no indica tion that a third party was placed in grave risk of death during the murder of the intended victim due to that third party’s temporal and spatial proximity to the victim.” Id. at 106 , 753 A.2d at 800 (Nigro, J., concurring), (emphasis in original) (footnotes omitted)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 5 Pa. D. & C.5th 50 - Commonwealth v. Fuentes-Flores