Commonwealth v. Wallace’s Empirical Analysis
2005
Citation profile
44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 45 later decisions — most recently March 2026 · most notably Commonwealth v. Dickson (2007), Commonwealth v. Fletcher (2009)
44 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 Commonwealth v. DiNicola · 2000 Pa. Super. 151 - Commonwealth v. Sierra · 1999 Pa. Super. 257 - Commonwealth v. Brown · 331 Pa. Super. 187 - Commonwealth v. Gochenaur · AT&T v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board
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 45 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“As ... the sentencing alternatives available to a court at the time of initial sentencing are all of the alternatives statutorily available under the Sentencing Code, ... at any revocation of probation hearing, the court is similarly free to impose any sentence permitted under the Sentencing Code and is not restricted by the bounds of a negotiated plea agreement between a defendant and prosecutor. [[Image here]] The rationale for giving the trial court such discretion upon resentencing is grounded in the nature of a negotiated guilty plea, which is a two-sided agreement that imposes obligations on both the defendant and the Commonwealth. On the one hand, the Commonwealth agrees not to prosecute the defendant to the full extent of the law and to recommend a circumscribed punishment. The defendant, on the other hand, accepts this benefit with the implicit promise that he will abide by the terms of the agreement and behave in accordance with the legal punishment imposed by the court. Significantly, the court ensures that the Commonwealth upholds its end of the bargain. Further, the court demands that the defendant, in return, fulfill his own obligations under the plea agreement in order to retain the benefits granted to him in that bargain. As a result, if the defendant fails to satisfy his obligations, e.g., by violating probation, he necessarily forfeits any entitlement to a circumscribed punishment. [T]o allow the defendant who breaches the bargain to keep the benefits confer”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.