Com. v. CMK’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

11 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 11 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “From a purely logical standpoint, the problems inherent in criminal codefendants filing a joint appeal are readily apparent. In most cases, they would not have been convicted for identical actions. If, then, these codefendants raised a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, as Appellants here do, the evidence under evaluation would be different for each defendant, necessitating individualized arguments and analyses. The same would be true for challenges to different sentences. Some appellate issues may coincide; for instance, in this case, Appellants challenge ex parte contact between the prosecutor and a juror. The potential for prejudice from such contact would appear to be the same for each defendant. However, even this claim may not be treated by this Court in exactly the same fashion. Appellants were individually represented at trial; accordingly, the issue may have been preserved at trial by one defendant's counsel and not the other's. In this case, Appellants have filed one joint brief which contains only joint arguments. These co-defendants are distinctive from typical co-defendants only in that they are married to each other. However, this distinction is irrelevant to the issues on appeal.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth, Aplt. v. Walker, T.

2. “Parties interested jointly, severally or otherwise in any order in the same matter or in joint matters or in matters consolidated for the purposes of trial or argument, may join as appellants or be joined as appellees in a single appeal where the grounds for appeal are similar, or any one or more of them may appeal separately or any two or more may join in an appeal.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Commonwealth, Aplt. v. Walker, T.