Supreme Court of Pennsylvania· 11/4/1991

Commonwealth v. Chambers

Citations

599 A.2d 630
528 Pa. 558
1991 Pa. LEXIS 238

How courts have described this case

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

concluding that advocating for a death sentence predicated upon religious writings constitutes reversible error because it suggests that the jury should base its decision on an independent source of law
finding reliance on religious material during penalty phase to be reversible error per se
\We now admonish all prosecutors that reliance in any manner upon the Bible or any other religious writing in support of the imposition of a penalty of death is reversible per se. . . .\
not using the term “structural error” but vacating a death sentence and holding that the “reliance in any manner upon the Bible or any other religious writing in support of a penalty of death is reversible error per se and may subject violators to disciplinary action”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Nix, Larsen, Flaherty, McDermott, Zappala, Papadakos, Cappy

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

Cites

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

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