Commonwealth v. Fischer’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 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 1 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “Because this appeal raises ineffective assistance of counsel, we are required to find that appellant’s trial lawyer made a mistake. That mistake is the failure to ask the trial court for an instruction that the Williams case held is unwarranted. In other words, we would have to find that counsel’s failure to argue for a change in the law constituted ineffectiveness. This, of course, is not possible. We simply cannot announce a new rule of law and then find counsel ineffective for failing to predict same. Assuming that we have the authority to declare that the instruction is one to which appellant should be entitled, we cannot hold that counsel erred in failing to demand it. The relief appellant seeks represents a significant departure from the current state of the law.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2000 Pa. Super. 202 - Commonwealth v. Farmer

2. “should have instructed the jury that if [he] reasonably believed that the [victim] had consented to his sexual advances that this would constitute a defense to the rape.... If the element of the defendant’s belief as to the victim’s state of mind is to be established as a defense to the crime of rape then it should be done by our legislature which has the power to define crimes and offenses. We refuse to create such a defense.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 2000 Pa. Super. 202 - Commonwealth v. Farmer