Commonwealth v. Hawkins’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

43 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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The [Pennsylvania] legislature ... provides that you are to consider any other evidence of mitigation concerning the character and record of the defendant and the circumstances of the defendant’s offense. And I have listed there [on the verdict slip], for your consideration, all of the mitigating factors that have been presented for your consideration under this subsection. They include physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, witness the abuse of others, psychological consequences of abuse. Substance abuse, al cohol abuse, conduct in prison. And during this trial the defendant stipulated to the fact that he participated in the murder.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth v. Laird · Commonwealth v. Laird

2. “The Commonwealth presented evidence that saliva was found on the victim's body. Expert witness FBI agent Richard Reem testified that the saliva was from a person who had type AB blood' and who was also a “secretor.” When asked about the statistical significance of his testimony he stated: The significance of this swab being that it's from a secretor and that it’s-approximately 22 percent of the black population have this particular type. Multiplying the 80 percent times 22 and then multiplying that times the four percent of the black population, you get approximately one individual in about 143 would have this particular blood type and be a secretor. The PCRA court found that: The testimony seems to show that Agent Reem miscalculated the statistical frequency of AB secretors in the African American population by multiplying the percentage of secretors (80%) by the percentage of people in the entire population who have the AB blood type (four percent) and multiplied that result by the percentage of people in the African American population who have the AB blood type (22%). If Agent Reem did so, then his results exaggerated the rarity of this type of saliva, which should have been 80% multiplied by 22% or 17.6%.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Baez v. Federal Bureau of Investigation

3. “It is established that appellate review of a trial court charge must involve a consideration of the charge as a whole to determine whether it was fair and complete. The review does not focus upon whether certain "magic words" were included in the charge. Rather, it is the effect of the charge as a whole that is controlling.”

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