Commonwealth v. Dillon’s Empirical Analysis
2007
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 69 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 73 later decisions — most recently November 2025 · most notably Commonwealth v. Sherwood (2009), 2014 Pa. Super. 10 - Commonwealth v. Antidormi (2014)
4 federal appellate · 69 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. Lark · Grady v. Frito-Lay, Inc. · Commonwealth v. Claypool · Commonwealth v. Billa · United States v. Powers
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 73 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'[u]nfair prejudice' means a tendency to suggest decision on an improper basis or to divert the jury's attention away from its duty of weighing the evidence impartially.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“Evidence will not be prohibited merely because it is harmful to the defendant. This court has stated that it is not “required to sanitize the trial to eliminate all unpleasant facts from the jury’s consideration where those facts are relevant to the issues at hand and form part of the history and natural development of the events and offenses for which the defendant is charged.” Lark, 543 A.2d at 501. Moreover, we have upheld the admission of other crimes evidence, when relevant, even where the details of the other crime were extremely grotesque and highly prejudicial. See Commonwealth v. Billa, 521 Pa. 168 , 555 A.2d 835, 841 (1989) (upholding the trial court’s admission of evidence that the defendant had committed a prior rape, including testimony from the prior rape victim); see also Commonwealth v. Gordon, 543 Pa. 513 , 673 A.2d 866, 870 (1996) (allowing evidence of defendant’s previous sexual assaults).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[B]oth the common law experience and the judgment of the General Assembly have led to a recognition of the relevance of the promptness of a complaint of sexual abuse, and this Court has separately recognized the reality that a sexual assault prosecution oftentimes depends predominately on the victim’s credibility, which is obviously affected by any delay in reporting the abuse. Revealing the circumstances surrounding an incident of sexual abuse, and the reasons for the delay, enables the fact-finder to more accurately assess the victim’s credibility. Moreover, this Court has acknowledged that juries in sexual assault cases expect to hear certain kinds of evidence and, without any reference to such evidence during the trial, a jury is likely to unfairly penalize the Commonwealth, the party with the burden of proof.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.