Commonwealth v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

65 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 67 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Appellant claims that previous counsel was ineffective for not challenging the instruction of the trial court concerning the purpose of aggravating and mitigating circumstances in capital cases. Specifically, Appellant complains that the following portion of the instruction of the trial court interfered with the determination of the jury of Appellant’s personal moral culpability for these murders: “[t]he Sentencing Code defines aggravating and mitigating circumstances. There [sic] are things that make a first degree murder case either more terrible or less terrible.” According to Appellant, the use of the word “terrible,” in conjunction with the use of the word “case,” improperly distracted the jury from consideration of Appellant’s mitigation evidence by drawing their attention to a generalized conception of the ‘case.’ When reviewing a challenge to a part of a jury instruction, an appellate court must review the jury charge as a whole to determine if it is fair and complete. A trial court has broad discretion in phrasing its charge and can choose its own wording so long as the law is clearly, adequately, and accurately presented to the jury for its consideration. Appellant ignores an earlier instruction by the trial court regarding the function of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, where the court stated: Now, the sentence that you impose will depend on whether you find any of the things that the Pennsylvania Sentencing Code calls aggravating or mitigating circumstan”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Johnson

2. “The Court defined torture to the jury as follows: “One of them is the model Penal Code in which they say that the offense or murder committed by means of torture is designed for the defendant who causes a considerable amount of pain and that the language used for this particularly aggravating circumstance is the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel manifesting exceptional depravity. Also, another place that I felt may be appropriate in trying to define for you torture was in the American Law Reports. These reports stated that since murder is an intentional act, that many courts have determined, regarding murder by torture, a specific intention that the torture murderer has in committing the homicide. It has been held that this is an intention to inflict pain, suffering or both pain and suffering.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Commonwealth, Aplt v. Pelzer, K.

3. “The admission of evidence is a matter vested within the sound discretion of the trial court, and such a decision shall be reversed only upon a showing that the trial court abused its discretion. In determining whether evidence should be admitted, the trial court must weigh the relevant and probative value of the evidence against the prejudicial impact of that evidence. Evidence is relevant if it logically tends to establish a material fact in the ease or tends to ‘support a reasonable inference regarding á material fact. Although a court may find that evidence is relevant, the court may nevertheless conclude that such evidehce is inadmissible on accdunt of its prejudicial impact.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2017 Pa. Super. 237 - Commonwealth v. Storey