Commonwealth v. Goodwine’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

10 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 10 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “An allegation that the verdict is against the weight of the evidence is addressed to the discretion of the trial court. A new trial should not be granted because of a mere conflict in the testimony or because the judge on the same facts would have arrived at a different conclusion. A trial judge must do more than reassess the credibility of the witnesses and allege that he would not have assented to the verdict if he were a juror. Trial judges, in reviewing a claim that the verdict is against the weight of the evidence!,] do not sit as the thirteenth juror. Rather, the role of the trial judge is to determine that notwithstanding all the facts, certain facts are so clearly of greater weight that to ignore them or to give them equal weight with all the facts is to deny justice.”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 2007 Pa. Super. 4 - Commonwealth v. Bruce · 2006 Pa. Super. 328 - Commonwealth v. Cesar

2. “Every unwise or irrelevant remark made in the course of a trial by a judge, a witness, or counsel does not compel the granting of a new trial. A new trial is required when the remark is prejudicial; that is, when it is of such a nature or substance or delivered in such a manner that it may reasonably be said to have deprived the defendant of a fair and impartial trial. Moreover, it must be determined from all the circumstances whether a remark has a prejudicial effect; there is no fixed rule applicable to every case. An accepted guide in determining prejudicial effect is that, if the remark may be said with fair assurance to have had but a slight effect upon the jury, if any at all, and one is not left in doubt that it had no substantial influence in the case, it will not vitiate an otherwise fair trial.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
   e.g. 2003 Pa. Super. 123 - Commonwealth v. Sullivan

3. “it is clear that this Court may review a weight of the evidence claim, even if the claim has not been preserved through post-sentence motions, as long as the trial court has addressed the claim in its Rule 1925 opinion,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Com. v. Washington