Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 8/21/2012

Commonwealth v. Brown

Citations

52 A.3d 1139
617 Pa. 107
2012 Pa. LEXIS 1890

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

holding that a witness’s prior inconsistent statements are sufficient to sustain a conviction so long as the statements “taken as a whole, establish every element of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt”
holding “each of the statements in the declaration must be examined”
emphasizing that “it is the finder-of-fact’s ability to make in-person observations of the witness at the time of trial, as he or she explains the reasons for the prior statement, which is most crucial to its assessment of the witness’s credibility[]”
adopting Williamson approach and hold- ing that ‘‘only the introduction of the portion or portions of an out-of-court statement [that] are self-inculpatory to the declarant’’ are admissible as statements against penal interest
“The trier of fact may bring to bear his or her sensory observations, experience, common sense and logic upon the witness to assess credibility and to determine the truth and accuracy of both the out- of-court declarations and in-court testimony.”
jury is free to credit prior inconsistent statement over recantation

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Baer, Castille, Eakin, McCaffery, Melvin, Saylor, Todd

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Cited by

51 cases in this archive cite this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

Cites

152 cases in this archive are cited by this case; the 20 most cited are listed.

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