Commonwealth v. Brown’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 12 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 14 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “There is no point in redacting and sanitizing otherwise inculpatory statements of a non-testifying co-defendant, to facilitate a joint trial, if that protective measure approved by the High Court to comport with the Confrontation Clause could be deliberately and directly undone by lawyer commentary. Consider, for example, if the redacted evidence would be powerfully incriminating if tied to the defendant, and the prosecutor were to say something along the lines of: "You heard the co-defendant's confession, which also described the actions of someone he identified only as `the other guy;' well, I'm here to tell you that `the other guy' he was speaking of was the defendant and we just changed the wording of the statement." ... We have no doubt that, in an appropriate case, the High Court would approve application of the per se Bruton rule to an instance where the objection is to argument by counsel concerning Bruton -redacted evidence.”

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

2. “[wjhen conspiracy is charged, a joint trial generally is advisable. In ruling upon a severance request, the trial court should consider the likelihood of antagonistic defenses. A claim of mere hostility between defendants, or that one defendant may tiy to exonerate himself at the expense of the other, however, is an insufficient basis upon which to grant a motion to sever. Indeed, this court has noted that “’the fact that defendants have conflicting versions of what took place, or the extents to which they participated in it, is a reason for rather than against a joint trial because the truth may be more easily determined if all are tried together.’” (Citations omitted). Instead, severance should be granted only where the defenses are so antagonistic that they are irreconcilable-i.e., the jury essentially would be forced to disbelieve the testimony on behalf of one defendant in order to believe the defense of his co-defendant.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 35 Pa. D. & C.5th 338 - Commonwealth v. Carrillo-Quintero

3. “The reason for [the] mistrial is Your Honor will recall that the Court and counsel went through painstaking efforts to properly redact Mr. Garcia’s statement and one of the first things [the prosecutor] did is whip it out and read from it and tell the jury that Mr. Garcia took Mr. Lambert back to his house with the gun and read the entire portion of that statement implicating Mr. Lambert as the other guy. In fact, [she] told the jury that Mr. Lambert was the other guy.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Brown v. Superintendent Greene SCI